"Kenneth Robeson - Doc Savage 111 - Pirate Isle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

Manu, meditation and sacred fig trees have something to do with it?"

“I doubt if they do,” admitted Captain Hardgrove. “However, those little stray facts just happened into
my mind. This is bark cloth, all right. The art of making it is not as much practiced through the South Sea
Islands as it once was.”

“Meaning?"

Captain Hardgrove shrugged. “Just aroused my interest, is all. Only worldly possession of the man in the
crow's nest—a scrap of bark cloth. Rather unique, wouldn't you say?"

The first officer leered maliciously.

“Don't,” he said, “forget the snowballs.”

The skipper's eye narrowed. He folded the panel of bark cloth carefully and thrust it into his jacket
pocket. He jerked his head slightly, then wheeled on his heel. Mr. Weed took the movements to mean
that he was to follow. So he trailed Captain Hardgrove, whose destination proved to be the hospital.

The hospital was a cabin so poorly located and ventilated that the company had not been able to sell it to
a passenger. It was not an advantageous surrounding for an illness, so the percentage of patients who
made a quick recovery was large. The hole was unwillingly presided over by Dr. Cunico.

“Get out of here!” directed Dr. Cunico, as soon as the captain and Mr. Weed entered the hospital.
“Either that, or grab this stomach pump and work it for me.”

“How is he?” asked the skipper.

“Fine,” said Dr. Cunico. “A fine example of how skinny a man can be and still live.” He whipped back
the sheet which was spread over the patient. “Look at him.”

The man from the crow's nest was extraordinarily long and unbelievably thin. His bones were coming
through. Not, however, from starvation. A perambulating skeleton seemed to be the shape which nature
had planned for him.

“Mercy!” said Mr. Weed.

“Hell's fire, he's not one of my passengers,” said Captain Hardgrove, vastly astonished. “I never saw him
before. I wouldn't forget a beanpole form like that. I thought he was one of my silly tourists. But he isn't. I
wonder who in the blasted rap-rap he is.”

“Stowaway?” suggested the first officer.

The skipper scratched his nose. “Obviously, Mr. Weed. Obviously.”

“With snowballs,” added Mr. Weed wearily. “I am beginning not to understand this at all.”

Dr. Cunico looked up with a frown. “Snowballs? What the hell! It's only a hundred and twenty around
here today.”