"Doc Savage Adventure 1935-07 Quest of Qui" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

The gist of it was that Johnny was thoroughly convinced that the Viking dragon ship was genuine, and that it had been built many centuries ago and repaired more recently. Furthermore, certain markings, coats of arms, in effect, discernible on the craft proved it had belonged to the fleet of one certain ancient Viking freebooter, "Tarnjen," by name.

Tarnjen, stated Johnny, had been the bad boy of his day, so bad indeed that he had been chased out of Viking land with a number of ships and what loot he had amassed, which was probably considerable. A year or two later, Tarnjen had returned with only one ship, a vastly humiliated soul. His other ships and men had been taken by the Qui. Just who the Qui were, historians did not seem certain. Some history tomes suggested that Qui was a name Tarnjen had given to some savage tribe on some remote continent.

Whoever or whatever Qui was, they had taken most of Tarnjen's men and ships, all of his loot, and sent him back, thoroughly broken. Qui, then, was a mystery.

Such was the gist of Johnny's recital.

This was the beginning of the mystery of Qui, a mystery from which amazing things came.


JOHNNY RETURNED to New York, but he was still interested; and since Doc Savage was still out of town, overseeing the construction of a charity hospital somewhere, and since there was no excitement brewing. Johnny had nothing to do but dabble with the mystery of Qui and the Viking dragon ship and the vanished yacht, Sea Scream, which still had not been found.

The raid of the Vikings was unusual news. It went far and wide. Reports came in. A liner captain had seen the dragon ship off Cape Cod, he reported. A fisherman claimed he had seen such a vessel in the Nova Scotia fog.

Johnny digested those two reports. They intrigued him. It seemed the dragon ship had come down from the north, had met the Sea Scream, and the freebooters had traded their craft for a more modern one which did not depend on the wind.

The upshot of it was that, some days later, Johnny was alone in a plane flying along the Labrador coast. Johnny had many accomplishments besides big words. Flying was one of them. Doc Savage had taught him, and Doc had an amazing faculty of transferring some of his own skill to those whom he instructed.

It was late afternoon. A snow blanket was beneath Johnny's plane. To the right lay a jagged, rock-fanged shore line. This was a wilderness, primeval, cold, unpopulated. A fishing village, passed hours ago, had been the last sign of human habitation on the bleak Labrador coast.

Johnny peered overside often. He used binoculars. His ship cruised along a bare five hundred feet above the white terrain.

An ice floe out at sea held his attention for a time, mainly because of its ominous aspect, and also because there was a school of seals on its edge. Natural life always interested Johnny.

Johnny was not quite sure what he was looking for, so he kept an eye open for anything of interest. That was why he went to investigate the smoke column.

The smoke was actually not a column. It was small, a gray yarn which whipped in the frigid Arctic gale. But it was the only trace of life the bony archaeologist and geologist had seen in hours. So he banked his plane over in that direction.

The fire was in the lee of a cathedral-like spire of stone. Snowdrifts were all about. The beach was close, a necklace of rocks, ice-crusted, which rimmed the shore line.

Johnny was close overhead before he saw the man.

The man lay on his back and the snow was red beside him. His arms made feeble, horrible motions, movements that were not a supplication to the plane above, for the man seemed not to know that the ship was moaning over him.

The man on the snow was obviously in a bad way. The red patch was certainly leakage from a wound. No dogs, no sleeping roll, could be seen.

Johnny now made one of the biggest mistakes of his life. He landed his plane.



Chapter 2

THE DEVILS OF QUI


IT WAS a rocky region, but there were stretches free of boulders. The snow was deep, and obviously covered with a hard crust. The wind - it was a fair breeze - was picking the loose flakes up and carrying them along in small, detached clouds. Johnny looked at the plane thermometer and saw that it was very close to zero - cold for this time of year, even this far north, since down in New York, it was early summer.

Johnny landed by the simple expedient of cranking the streamlined landing gear up. He absent-mindedly cranked it partially down before he thought and sat the plane down on its belly. The craft was designed for that, but the nose had to be kept up throughout to protect the propeller. Johnny had not landed on snow for a long time, and he miscalculated the distance the plane would slide, with the result that he almost, but not quite, coasted into a nest of boulders.