"That's it!" Renny said at last. Renny was looking over Doc's shoulder. The big-fisted fellow probably knew as much about maps as any man. It was part of his engineering training.

  Doc ran the magnifying glass along the irregular line which indicated the shore on the carving. It was not hard to find the location of the entombed galleon.

  The spot was marked by a tiny, exquisitely carved skull. There was no other peculiar mark on the map, which made it almost certain the skull identified the location of the galleon.

  "The darn thing isn't over a mile from here!" Renny boomed.

  Senor Oveja, his daughter, and El Rabanos had not been parties to the inspection of the insides of the ivory block. Chancing to come into the room now, they observed what had been going on.

  "I demand that block!" Senor Oveja said angrily. "It is mine!"

  "By what right?" Doc queried.

  Senor Oveja sputtered indignantly. "My ancestor--"

  "Your ancestor was a thief," Doc said shortly. "The ivory block was admittedly not his property. Nor was the galleon or its contents."

  Senor Oveja seemed about to explode. Before he could do that, Doc walked away. The bronze man had the sections of the ivory block in a pocket.

  "You fellows drift out in the brush," Doc told Monk in a low voice. "I'll join you a bit later. It'll save trouble with Senor and Senorita Oveja and El Rabanos, if they do not know we are going. We'll leave Long Tom here to watch them. Long Tom has to stay anyway, to protect Patricia with his listening device. He has to give Pat warning if any of our enemies come close, so she can duck."

  "We're going to have a look at that galleon?" Monk guessed in a hushed whisper.

  "You have guessed it," Doc told him.

  TWENTY minutes later, Ham was hissing peevishly at Monk, "Can't you be quiet, you missing link! You make more fuss than all the rest of us together!"

  This was hardly true. Ham had just fallen down, making a considerable racket.

  Monk only sniffed. "Why don't you throw that sword cane away, shyster? That's what you're stumbling over."

  The dapper Ham had retained his sword cane through the excitement. He had lost it in the cabin when the gang seized him. Upon escaping, his first act had been to find it.

  "You tripped me!" Ham growled. "You big accident of nature!"

  "Gilt out the funnyboning, you culls!" Renny's big voice boomed softly. "The dog-gone galleon should be around here some place!"

  The sloppy smack of waves began to reach their ears. Each smack was followed by a long flutter of falling spray. This indicated the shore was a rock wall climbing sheer from the water.

  Like mountaineers, the men were carrying a long rope. This was vitally necessary. The way they were traversing was incredibly rough. Deep gashes appeared underfoot with the unexpectedness of crevasses in a glacier.

  More than once, they had to lower a man over a lip of stone until he touched bottom. Just as often, they had to remain at the foot of a wall of stone while Doc Savage climbed with the end of the rope, later to haul them up. To Doc's enormous strength, agility, and sense of balance, the canyon wails presented no great obstacles.

  Eventually, Doc's men sank on the crest of a small ridge, panting. They rested there. Doc had gone on ahead while they climbed. They presumed he was searching for the spot marked on the map within the ivory cube.

  "Here it is, men!" Doc called suddenly.

  The men came to life as if lightning had struck near by. They scrambled down the steep slope toward the spot Doc's voice had come from.

  The bronze man stood beside a waist-high pile of evergreen brush. The spot was in a cuplike depression. On all sides, stone wails sloped up steeply.

  The gaunt Johnny looked around vacantly. He took off his glasses, put them back on again.

  "I don't see anything," he said.

  Doc Savage grasped a limb which projected near the bottom of the brush pile. He lifted it, and upset the entire pile.

  The brush had covered a hole in the steep slope of the hill--the mouth of a tunnel. It was perhaps three feet wide, four high.

  For a few feet, the tunnel penetrated soft earth. For that distance, it was timbered. The timbers were bright and new. In some spots, twigs still clung to them. Leaves on these were still green.

  Beyond the timbering, the tunnel dived into solid rock and sloped sharply downward. Its floor became a series of crude steps.

  "This work was done a long, long time ago," said Johnny. If any one was qualified to judge the age of mankind's handiwork, the gaunt archaeologist was. He could look at a goblet from an Egyptian tomb, and tell what Pharaoh drank out of it.

  "But the work at the entrance was very recent," Monk muttered. "It hasn't been done over a week or two, I'll bet."

  The steps ended. The tunnel traveled straight ahead for a few feet. It emptied then into what appeared to be a subterranean room.

  Doc snapped a long, glaring white beam from his flashlight, and roved it slowly about.

  "Holy cow!" breathed Renny in awe-stricken tones.

  Chapter 18 THE SKELETON CREW

  THE underground recess was not as large as it had seemed at first. It was, in fact, hardly more than enough to contain the thing it held.

  The walls to the right were solid and smooth, once a canyon side. To the left was rock--cracked, distorted slide-in rock, but solid for all of that.

  A small rill of water crawled across the sandy floor. It looked like a flow of molten silver.

  The galleon had bulked big in front of their eyes. It bad been blocked up on rocks for a bull-scraping when disaster had overtaken it. The fact that it had been blocked up had preserved it from dampness to a certain extent. But it was not exactly seaworthy.

  Once the galleon might have been a gilded pride of the Spanish Main. No telling what colors had bedecked it. But it was gray now--gray because of a repulsive mold which covered it like a carpet.

  To the left of where Doc and his men stood, a skeleton lay on a rock. It lay in a curled position, like a slumbering dog. One of the hands, from which part of the finger bones had dropped, was over a gaping eye socket, as if to keep out the light.

  "One of the galleon crew I guess," said Renny. The big engineer's enormous voice was a booming roar which assumed ear-splitting proportions in the cavern confines.

  "Use your muffler!" Monk whispered. "You'll shake this place down on us."

  Doc Savage turned. His flash beam, like a rod of white flame, impaled each of his men in turn. In their eagerness, all four had followed him into the tunnel.

  The flash beam went to the sandy floor. Tracks were there. Fresh tracks! The imprints were those of moccasins!

  Doc moved along the side of the galleon, his men trailing him. They passed three more skeletons. Rusty streaks beside the bone assemblies might once have been blunderbusses or swords.

  Several piles of rust along the cavern wall hinted at cannons which must have been removed to lighten the galleon for careening.

  Reaching out, Doc placed a finger against the hull. With a little pressure, the finger sank for half its length into the mold-covered wood. The galleon was a pile of rot.

  Doc came to a halt. Before him in the hull of the galleon, a hole gaped. It was a fresh bole, and at least four feet square. It looked like it had been dug open with a spade.

  Doc popped his light into the bole. There were more skeletons--five, six, seven of them, this time. They were gray things, made utterly hideous by the mold which covered them.

  It was indeed a macabre argosy, this ship from another age, with its crew of skeletons.

  Doc entered. He sank ankle-deep in the spongy timbers. It seemed inevitable that the whole ship would come down about his ears.

  Going on, his light picked up objects which bore a marked resemblance to the brass-bound chests which historians write of. He dropped the glittering thread of light into one of these.

  "Empty!" Renny thundered. "The treasure is gone!"

  DOC Savage stepped swiftly to each of the chests in turn. He worked his way aft through a bulkhead. More of the chests were there. He picked up a small circular piece of metal and a green, glittering object which might have been colored glass--but wasn't.

  He carried the articles back and showed them to his men.

  "A piece-of-eight, and a small emerald!" Monk muttered. "That indicates there was really a treasure here."

  Ham punched angrily at a bulkhead with his sword cane. The cane sank part of its length in the soggy wood.

  "It's gone!" he snapped. "Who got it?"

  "You noticed those tracks," Doc said. "They were made by feet shod in moccasins."

  Ham frowned. "You mean--Boat Face?"

  "Boat Face made the tracks," Doc said. "Not only did the Indian have the ivory cube, but he knew its significance. The gang who was after it must have told him what it was. Probably they hired him to get it for them. Then, when he double-crossed them, they killed him."

  "It looks like our job now is to find out where Boat Face put the treasure," Renny grumbled.

  "Maybe he didn't take it out of here," Monk offered. "After all, this is as good a hiding place as any. Let's look around."

  Monk started for the stern. Doc was at his side. They passed through an aperture which had been spaded in a molded bulkhead.

  Doc suddenly dropped a hand on Monk's shoulder. Monk's gristled, apish frame weighed in the neighborhood of two hundred and fifty pounds, but Doc's hand brought him up as sharply as if he had been a child.

  "Back!" Doc rapped.

  "Blazes! What's wrong?" Monk had wheeled, was diving back the way he had come as he asked the question.

  Doc Savage made no answer. He was close behind Monk. Just before leaving the compartment, he halted, half turned, and popped his flashlight ahead.

  The light disclosed a thin thread as gray as the mold which covered every inch of the ancient galleon. The thread was about six inches above the floor.

  Wheeling, Doc followed Monk back to the others. They all stared at him, expecting an explanation. They were all a bit on edge. This place they were in--a grave which covered a hideous ship and its macabre crew of skeletons--had got under their skin somewhat.

  Doc did not explain.

  "Outside!" he said.

  They scrambled into the rock tunnel, mounted the steps, and stumbled out into the night.

  The cup-shaped depression into which the tunnel mouth opened was fairly deep. The moon was low in the sky. Its beams did not penetrate to the depression bottom.

  "Whe-e-ew!" said Monk. "I'm glad to get out of that place! What went wrong, Doc?"

  "Plenty has gone wrong--for you, amigos!" announced a guttural voice.

  With that, several flashlights poked white funnels down over the depression rim. Doc and his men were wrapped in a white glare of light.

  Squinting against glare, they could see men with guns on all sides of them.

  ONE of the encircling gang hastily left his fellows and darted down the side of the depression. His gait down the steep slope was a series of grotesque hops. He came to a stop about halfway down.

  "We know all about the gas!" said the guttural voice which had spoken previously. "I mean, Senor Savage, the gas which does its work while you hold your breath. Do not try to use it. If the man who just came near you drops, we will begin shooting. Sabe?"

  Monk and Ham exchanged uneasy looks. They had forgotten their animosity. Johnny and Renny stood perfectly still.

  Each of Doc's men carried one of the little supermachine guns under his coat. They debated their chances of seizing the guns and making a fight of it. The chances seemed slim.

  "Easy does it," Doc said in an expressionless voice. "If we start fireworks, we haven't a chance."

  "That is very sensible, hombres," said the voice above. "Each of you will remove his upper garments. Strip to the skin. Roll up your trousers legs to show no weapons are concealed beneath them. Turn your trousers pockets inside out."

  The speaker was not one of the ring of gunmen. He stood behind them, hidden from view.

  Doc and his four men stripped off coats, shirts, and undershirts. Doc shed his remarkable vest. They rolled up trousers legs, then turned pockets out.

  "Bueno!" said the masked man. "We can now be sure that they have no weapons left. Go, amigos, and seize them!"

  Men came sliding down the side of the depression.

  Doc Savage had seen ail of the gang on other occasions. They were the kidnapers of Patricia Savage. Doc counted eleven of them. That was the entire gang, except the leader.

  Their chief did not appear. He remained above, unseen.

  The men carried ropes. They began tying the prisoners. One fellow's rope was of extraordinary length, and it was he who bound Doc Savage.

  The ropes were not of hemp, but of braided Cotton. They were very strong. The men doing the knotting knew how it should he done.

  Apparently, Doc submitted meekly to the binding. But a close observer might have noticed that the cables of muscles on his wrists were even larger than usual. Doc was holding the tendons tense. If he were tied while they were thus, he had merely to relax to get sufficient slack to shake off the binding ropes.

  One of the swarthy gang had a canvas bag slung over a shoulder. From this, he drew a bottle-shaped object of shiny metal. The neck was fitted with a valve.

  "Now, I will give the hombres the same thing I gave Alex Savage!" growled the man.

  From the same sack, which had held the metal flask, the fellow withdrew two fragments of rather floppy rubber. These were carved, rubber-stamp fashion. The carving was that of a wolf with strangely human features. These were obviously the stamps used to leave the weird werewolf marks.

  The gold flakes in Doc's eyes seemed to have turned to a tawny frost.

  Here was the murderer of Alex Savage!

  "No!" called the unseen leader from above. "Not the gas!"

  "We can leave them somewhere," muttered the man with the gas flask. "No one can tell but what they died of heart failure."

  "No! Not yet!"

  Reluctantly, the swarthy man replaced the metal gas bottle in the canvas bag container.

  Another dark man drew a knife. He juggled the blade in a way which showed remarkable dexterity. His manner indicated he was the knife-throwing expert of the group, and that he was proud of it.

  "Then I will dispose of them as I did Boat Face, amigos," he smirked.

  Doc Savage said nothing, made no move. It was a bad sign, the frank way these fellows were speaking of past crimes. It meant that they had little intention of Doc and his men living to bear witness--to tell a jury what they had heard.

  "No!" said the concealed chief. "No knife--yet!"

  The hidden leader now showed himself. He came skidding down the slope. He was a tall man; little more than that could be seen of him. He wore a mask--a great bandanna handkerchief which covered his head as well as his features.

  Doc Savage glanced at Monk.

  "Do you know this fellow, Monk?" he asked dryly.

  Monk squinted at the masked man. "Nope. Can't recognize 'em.

  "Isn't his walk familiar?"

  Monk considered, acting as if the individual they were discussing were not present.

  "Ain't able to tell, Doc," he said. "You'll have to spill it."

  "O. K.," said Doc. "The bird is--"

  The masked man snarled. He doubled and scooped up one of the tiny supermachine guns which Doc had been forced to drop. Leveling it, he shot Doc in his unprotected chest.

  Chapter 19 THE KILLING DEAD

  DOC dropped. The tiny machine gun happened to be latched into single-shot position. That was fortunate. Even though the gun was charged with mercy bullets, at that short range a flood of the slugs would have wrought fatal injury.

  As it was, Doc took only one mercy bullet in the chest. The stupefying chemical worked swiftly. Doc was probably asleep before he hit the ground.

  Monk and the others stared at their bronze chief. They were dazed. Now that they thought back, this was the first time they could remember having seen Doc entirely helpless.

  They themselves, being bound with rope which was beyond their strength to break, were powerless to aid their bronze chief.

  "Bueno!" said the swarthy man who wielded knives. "Let us give him another bullet--a real bullet!"

  The masked man shook his head slowly. "No, amigos! We will delay that. These men may have removed the treasure. If so, we will have to make them lead us to it."

 

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