"056 (B028) - Repel (The Deadly Dwarf) (1937-10) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Chapter 4. THE SCARED GIRL
MONK and Ham were never together very long at any time without practically coming to blows. That exciting things might be happening around them made little difference with their quarrel. They had been known to lie in a frontline trench during a bombardment and pass the time by threatening to skin each other alive.
"You awful accident of nature!" Ham was telling the homely chemist. "You something to scare babies with! You've taken a file and sharpened that hog's tusks!"
"So what of it, you shyster?" Monk sneered. "Your Chemistry keeps devilin' 'im. Habeas has gotta have a defensive armament."
Ham glanced compassionately at Chemistry, who seemed to have come off on the scarred end of his last brush with Habeas.
"I'm going to take a rock and do some dental work on that hog!" he declared.
"You do and I'll use the same rock for a major skull operation on you!" Monk promised.
Doc Savage had been paying no attention to the argument. The three had approached to within a few hundreds yards of the cliff which dropped sheer to the sea. It was over this cliff that the hot lava poured and set up clouds of steam which actually extended for miles into the tropical sky.
The bronze man pointed. Monk and Ham looked, but could discern nothing that had not been happening for several days.
"Watch. It may come up again." Doc got on top of a small rocky knob.
Great sheets of the hot lava unexpectedly splashed out of the creek of molten rock. This happened about a hundred feet back from the cliff edge. There was absolutely no reason for it occurring, as far as could be seen.
"Come on, Habeas," Monk said in a small voice. "I think me and you will hunt us a hole somewhere."
"Afraid?" Ham snorted.
"Not of anything I can look at," Monk said, glancing at Ham. "But that thingamumgrabber got hold of me. I'd just as soon somebody else had the pleasure next time. If you ask me, it made that splash just now when it jumped out of the lava."
Ham scoffed, "A lot of help you are going to be in investigating!"
"Go right ahead, feller. I'll write a book and tell your posterity, which you ain't got any, thank heavens, how fearless you were."
Ham planted his sword cane on the ground, glared and gave all signs of being willing to delay for an argument. He started out by telling Monk how his ancestors had lived in trees, and probably scrubby trees at that. He was getting around to detail when they both discovered Doc Savage had gone on toward the sea.
When they followed the bronze man, Monk and Ham kept rather close together.
DOC SAVAGE was positioned in a depression on the cliff edge some distance from the spot where the lava stream emptied into the sea. The little pit where he crouched, made by the weather, was about the size of those the covered wagon immigrants used to dig up to fight redskins.
Monk and Ham strained their eyes after they joined the bronze man. The molten rock was making a tremendous boiling in the sea. The breeze was off the land, and carried most of the steam out to sea.
The boats carrying the motion picture cameramen—the craft were a yawl and a cabin cruiser—looked surprisingly tiny at the base of the gigantic mass of steam. The whole effect was that of a leviathan nature aroused and giving an exhibition which brought home definitely the smallness and instability of the world which man is liable to accept as so great and unchanging only because it seems so to him.
"Brothers, this is quite a show." Monk's small voice had grown more tiny than usual.
Doc Savage said, "The thing has followed the lava stream down and is about to enter the sea. It may be interesting to watch what will happen."
Monk swallowed twice.
"After the thing has been livin' in that lava, the sea water may be kinda cold," was all he could think of.
They waited. The bronze man had produced a small, powerful telescope from a trousers pocket and was studying the lava flow.
The telescope was hardly necessary to see what happened. The lava where it went over the cliff—it was like a fantastic taffy being poured out of a monstrous kettle—began to squirm and fly apart. It was as if something inside it were kicking and flinging about, some behemoth thing which did not quite show itself. It fell into the sea.
Instantly there was a vastly augmented uprush of steam. A turmoil in the water. A threshing. The steam rolled and grew, spreading until it hid whatever was happening.
"There it goes!" Monk squawled.
A fast-traveling swell had appeared on the sea almost beneath them. It was such a turmoil as is made by a big fish swimming close to the surface of water.
The boil of water abruptly changed direction, veering out to sea. It left a trail of steam behind it. It altered its course again, almost doubling back.
"Hey!" Monk barked. "It's just like a fish that's been hooked!"
A cloud of water arose in the air. There must have been tons of it. They distinctly heard the roar as it fell back, loud over the express train roar of the sea boiling around the lava.
"It jumped out!" Ham gulped.
But it hadn't. It was still traveling under the sea. Back and forth, in straight lines, in snaky curves. The ridge of water which it lifted was not as high.
"It's slowin' down!" Monk exclaimed.
It was. Within five minutes—its wanderings did not take it more than half a mile from where they stood—the thing had almost stopped. It did stop twice, only to move again.
They waited.
Monk wet his lips. "Just as if the thing was dyin'!"
Doc Savage had not spoken. The remarkable bronze man rarely expended words in comment.
"There! It has stopped again." Ham pointed.
A column of water was rising from the surface of the sea about a quarter of a mile offshore. A thin column, it was not unlike the eruption of a geyser. At its topmost point, the water was flung to a height of nearly a hundred feet.
The geyser remained where it was—four minutes, eight.
Monk shook his head. "I'll be durned if I can savvy what kind of a critter that is."
Doc Savage had apparently been giving all attention to what was happening in the sea, but now he said, "Some one is coming. Running."
Monk and Ham frowned, strained their ears ahead of cupped palms. The fact that they heard nothing did not surprise them. The bronze man had an almost abnormal hearing developed by years of scientific exercise.
A girl came running down the lava stream toward them.
SHE was a slender girl in boots, the same one who had been with Johnny a few minutes before. Her blue eyes were wide with emotion, and she was winded.
Her sun helmet was dented. That side of her face was stained a little with red.
"The thing must have taken him!" she cried out.