King Kong Page 5

  Driscoll was still staring in angry puzzlement at his smiling employer when a young sailor hurried up.

  “Mr. Denham,” he said. “The Skipper says, will you please come up on the bridge? We’ve reached the position you marked, he says.”

  “Right, Jimmy.”

  Denham’s face lighted, and he squared his shoulders in the characteristic gesture of triumph which had marked him in the moment of his discovery of Ann.

  “Come on, Jack. You’re in on this. You wanted to know where we were going. Follow me. I’m going to spill it.”

  He raced off to the bridge, and Driscoll, with eyes bright, made a close second.

  Captain Englehorn, placid, methodical, even in this moment of long-awaited revelation, was looking down upon a table which held an outspread chart.

  “Here’s our noon position,” he said, between slow chews. “Two South, ninety East. You promised me some information, Mr. Denham, at this point.”

  “ ’Way west of Sumatra.” Denham looked tensely down at the chart. “That’s right! ’Way west of Sumatra.”

  “ ’Way out of any waters I know,” said Englehorn. “I can read the East Indies like my own hand. But I was never around this place before.”

  “Where do we go from here?” Driscoll asked eagerly.

  “Southwest,” Denham snapped.

  “Southwest?” Englehorn chewed more slowly. “But in that direction there is nothing…nothing for thousands of miles. What about food? So many in the crew makes the food go fast. And water? And coal?”

  “Ease off, Skipper.” Denham laughed, his shoulders still square, his face alight. “We’re not going much more than around the corner from here.”

  He took a wallet from his breast pocket, opened it, drew out a heavy envelope and from its protecting thickness produced two well worn pieces of paper. These he spread out upon the table under the eyes of his captain and mate.

  “There’s the island we’re looking for.”

  “Ah! The position of it.” Englehorn leaned over the chart, and then straightened up. “Mr. Driscoll, fetch the big chart.”

  “You won’t find that island on any chart, big or little, Skipper. All we’ve got to go by I’ve shown you here. This picture and the position, both made up by a friend of mine, the skipper of a Norwegian barque.”

  “He was kidding,” Driscoll said.

  “Listen!” Denham faced the other two as though he would convince them by eye as well as by tongue. “A canoe with natives from this island was blown out to sea. When my Norwegian barque picked them up only one was alive. He died before they reached port; but not before his story had enabled the skipper to piece together a description of the island and a fairly good idea of where it lies.”

  “And where did you come in?” Driscoll asked, while Englehorn chewed methodically.

  “Two years ago, in Singapore. I’d known the Norwegian for years. He was sure I’d be interested.”

  “Does he believe the native’s story, this Norwegian?” Englehorn murmured.

  “Who cares? I do! Why shouldn’t I? Do you think a picture as detailed as that could grow entirely out of the imagination?”

  The map was, in truth, impressive. It began, at the left, with a long, sandy peninsula, a mile or more in extent. In front of the peninsula a reef was indicated, with a tortuous passageway sketchily outlined. In the other direction the peninsula’s sparsely wooded extent ended abruptly against a steep precipice. This precipice, according to the Norwegian skipper’s rough notes, was hundreds of feet high and marked the edge of a dense growth which covered the many square miles comprising the rest of the island. Above the dense upland growth, and seemingly from the center of it, rose a mountain whose crudely drawn outline suggested a skull. The last detail was the most curious, and startling. It was a wall, higher than a dozen tall men, and impregnable. And this wall, at the base of the peninsula, stretched from the sea on one side to the sea on the other, serving as a mighty barrier against who or what might attempt to come down the precipice from the back country.

  “A wall!” Englehorn murmured.

  “And what a wall!” Denham said. “Built so long ago that the descendants of the builders have slipped back into savagery, and have completely forgotten the remarkable civilization which erected the shield on which they now depend. But the wall is as strong today as it was ages ago.”

  Denham paused to nod emphatically.

  “The natives take care that it never grows weak. They need it.”

  “Why?” Driscoll wanted to know.

  “Because there’s something on the other side…something they fear.”

  “A tribe of enemies, I guess,” Englehorn murmured.

  Denham looked sidewise at his skipper, his brown eyes snapping; then sat down and reached for his seldom unemployed package of cigarettes.

  “Did either of you ever hear,” he asked, “of…Kong?”

  Driscoll shook his head. Englehorn chewed thoughtfully.

  “Kong? Why…yes. A Malay superstition. Is not that it? A God, or devil, or something?”

  “Something, all right,” Denham agreed. “But neither man nor beast. Something monstrous. All powerful. Terribly alive. Holding that island in the grip of deadly fear, as it held those intelligent ancestors who built the mighty wall.”

  Englehorn resumed his placid, methodical chewing. Driscoll was plainly skeptical.

  “I tell you there’s something on that island,” Denham declared. “Something no white man has ever seen. Every legend has a basis of truth.”

  “And,” exclaimed Englehorn in tardy enlightenment, “you expect to photograph it.”

  “Whatever is there. You bet I’ll photograph it.”

  “Suppose,” Driscoll suggested, dryly, “that it doesn’t like to have its picture taken?”

  Denham stood up smiling, and dusted his hands in brisk good cheer.

  “Suppose it doesn’t?” he said. “Why do you suppose I brought those gas bombs?”

  He turned and stared into the southwest. Skeptical though he was and anxious for Ann, Driscoll could not resist staring too, and in spite of himself, his eyes sparkled with a reckless excitement. Englehorn, chewing placidly, considered the pictured island and then taking a pair of dividers, he began locating it upon the chart outspread upon his table.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  High above the Wanderer’s scorched and peeling deck, Driscoll pushed up the floor plate of the crow’s nest and clambered through. Once on his feet he reached down to Ann. His brown hand closed over her slight wrist with careful deliberation. When she had got in, the trap dropped beneath his feet and the pair of them swayed slowly in cadence with the gently rocking mast.

  So high up, they could feel a little wind, and Ann pushed her yellow hair severely back over small shapely ears that every available bit of face and neck might receive the welcome breeze. Driscoll nodded approval as he wiped his damp forehead.

  From their high perch the ocean seemed even more brilliantly blue than it had been from the ship’s side. Miles to the south a something resembling a fleecy rope stretched along the water, its ends disappearing in distance which baffled the eye. It seemed no higher than a hand’s breadth, but at intervals it swelled a little and threw off wispy tendrils.

  Against the blue sweep of the sky there showed only one bit of life. An albatross moved far off and close to the line where sea and sky met. It curved and swung like a brilliantly maneuvered aeroplane between them and the late afternoon sun.

  “How splendid!” cried Ann. “Why didn’t you bring me up here before? I feel like an explorer.”

  “Let’s see,” Driscoll considered, grinning. “An explorer is someone who gets there first. Well, you’re an explorer then, sure enough. You’re the first woman ever to set foot in this crow’s nest.”

  “And going to an island wh
ere we’ll all be the first white people. It’s terribly exciting. When do you think we’ll get there?” Ann lifted an eager questioning face.

  “Well, if there is any such place,” Driscoll answered, smiling down at her indulgently, “we ought to find it in the next twenty-four hours.”

  “Mr. Denham’s so worked up about it he can’t keep still. I don’t believe he went to bed all last night.”

  “I’m kind of worked up myself,” Driscoll admitted, looking toward the southwest.

  Ann turned upon him accusingly.

  “You? Why, you don’t even believe there is an island.”

  “I hope there isn’t,” Driscoll said soberly.

  “And you the lad who ran away from home to find a life of adventure! Fie, Mr. Mate!”

  Her voice was teasing. If she had any suspicion as to the cause of his reluctance to encounter Mystery Island, she did not betray it. Driscoll looked at her sharply.

  “Don’t you know why I’m worked up, Ann? Don’t you know it’s because of you? Denham’s such a fool for risks. What will he expect you to do?”

  “After what he did for me, Jack, I’d do whatever he asks. You wouldn’t want me to do anything else.”

  “Yes I would, Ann. There’s a right limit. But Denham doesn’t remember it when there’s a picture at stake. He doesn’t care what happens, so long as he gets what he’s after. Yes, I know! You’re going to say that he never asks us to do what he won’t do, and that’s O.K. as far as men are concerned. But it’s different with you aboard.”

  “Well, you don’t need to worry yet.”

  “I can’t help it. If anything happened to you…! Ann, look at me!”

  Instead of looking, Ann turned her head so that only one white ear with a wisp of yellow curl behind it remained in Driscoll’s view.

  “Ann, you know I love you!”

  Still, she did not turn her head, but the ear with the curl behind it grew pink.

  Driscoll put his hands on her shoulders, drew her slowly against him.

  For the briefest moment, Ann rested there. Then she twisted away to welcome a chattering Ignatz who appeared behind them.

  “Jack! He’s broken loose again.”

  “Ann! Look at me!”

  But Ann was too busy with the wildly careening Ignatz. He leaped to her shoulder and clung about her neck.

  “I really believe he’s jealous of you, Jack.”

  Driscoll lifted the monkey urgently and firmly from her neck.

  “Ann!” he said. “We have so little time. Please, Ann, I’m scared of you, and I’m scared for you, and I love you so.”

  Ann looked at him then, and with an end to all pretense she stepped forward into his arms. Driscoll’s lips bent to her hair, to the ear with the curl behind it, to her lips which she lifted, curving them into a smile.

  Sunset had come on. The bright clear blue of the daylight sky was flooded to the westward with pinks and indigos, with emeralds and jades, with russet, saffron, peach and yellow.

  Against this brilliant camouflage, the distant albatross swung briefly and was lost to sight.

  Southward the faint fleecy rope had grown by minute degrees to a low barrier of fog which was moving perceptibly closer to the ship.

  None on the crow’s nest noticed it, however; least of all, Ignatz, who chattered furiously at Ann’s feet.

  CHAPTER SIX

  All through the night the fog thickened. Hours before daylight the Wanderer, headed by Captain Englehorn toward the Norwegian skipper’s incredible island, had slowed to little more than steerage way. When morning came she was still creeping through a yellow-white blanket, miles in extent.

  Against the penetrating dampness of this blanket no garment was proof. The clothes of everyone drooped in loose, sodden folds. Water dripped everywhere, from spars, stays and walls, and gathering on the cold deck ran in slow, uncertain rivulets.

  At a distance of a dozen feet, men and such solid objects as masts and ventilators became vaguely wavering wraiths. At greater distances they vanished behind the soft, yellow-white silence. Up on the bridge Denham and Englehorn, Driscoll and Ann could see nothing of the sailor who heaved a lead in the bow, or of the other sailor who tried to pierce the thick veil from the high vantage point of the crow’s nest. These could be heard, however. By some atmospheric trick their voices seemed to ring more loudly through the fog than they had ever come through clear sunlight.

  “This triple-damned fog!” Denham choked. He could scarcely speak from excitement. He was as tense as a man on a tight rope, and he never stopped staring forward into the enwrapping cloud. “Are you sure of your position, Skipper?”

  “Sure!” Englehorn murmured placidly, and cut himself some fresh plug cut. “Last night, before this stuff closed around us, I got a fine sight.”

  “Jack!” Ann whispered, taking a fresh hold on Driscoll’s hand. “If we don’t get somewhere soon, I’ll explode. I never was so excited in my life.”

  “Don’t bounce around so,” Driscoll warned her. “Next thing you know you’ll be rolling off the ship. And don’t,” he added more soberly, “keep doing things to get me excited. I’m fit to be tied right now. I’d like to throw my cap up into the air and yell Blue Blazes. But when I think of what we may be taking you into, I know I’ve got to keep my head.”

  “If your position is right, Skipper,” said Denham, “we ought to be near the island.”

  “If we don’t see it when this fog lifts,” Englehorn murmured confidently, “we never shall. We’ve quartered these parts. Either we’re on top of it or we’ve found blue water in the place it should be.”

  The high, intent voice of the sailor in the bow came sharply up to the bridge.

  “No bottom at thirty fathoms.”

  “Of course,” Driscoll ventured, almost hopefully, “that Norse skipper was just guessing at the position.”

  “How will we know it’s the right island?” Ann asked.

  “I told you!” Denham rasped impatiently. “The mountain!” His eyes tried to pierce the fog. “The mountain that looks like a skull.”

  “I’d forgotten,” Ann apologized. “Of course. Skull Mountain.”

  “Bottom!” The high voice shot back from the bow, and at that triumphant cry they all stiffened. “Bottom! Twenty fathoms!”

  “I knew it.” Englehorn chewed placidly. “She’s shallowing fast. Dead slow, Mr. Driscoll. Tell ’em!”

  Driscoll tore into the wheel house and spoke down the engine room tube. Bells jangled below in reply and the Wanderer dropped off to a speed that was scarcely more than drifting.

  “Look!” Ann cried. “Isn’t the fog thinner?”

  “Sixteen!” came the voice from the bow. “Sixteen fathoms!”

  “What does she draw, Skipper?” Denham demanded.

  “Six!” For the first time, Englehorn was stirred out of his customary placidity. He was like Denham now, staring intently, listening even more intently.

  “Listen!” Ann whispered.

  “What do you hear?” Denham whispered back.

  Ann shook her head, and with the other three continued to listen. Suddenly the young, nervous voice of Jimmy dropped down from the crow’s nest.

  “Breakers!”

  “Where away?” Driscoll shouted.

  “Dead ahead!”

  Driscoll leaped for the wheel house and the engine room tube again. His order came out to the others sharp and clear, and its dying note was followed by the jangle of the engine room’s bells and the roll and thunder of the Wanderer’s reversing engines.

  “Ten fathoms!” called the man in the bow.

  “Let go!” Englehorn roared mightily.

  Up forward dim wraiths leaped to action. A chain clanked and rattled through a hawse pipe. An anchor splashed. More bells jangled below. The Wanderer was suddenly
motionless and still. Everyone listened.

  “That’s not breakers,” Driscoll declared roundly.

  “It’s drums,” Englehorn murmured, placid once more.

  The fog, which had been thinning almost imperceptibly, lifted while they listened. Before the edge of a brisk, sheering wind it parted and rolled away. The blue sea lay exposed under a sun but faintly veiled. And a little way off, hardly more than a quarter of a mile, a high wooded island with a skull-like knob reached out toward the ship with a long, brush-covered finger of sand and rocks.

  “Skull Mountain!” Denham flung out a victorious arm. “Do you see it? And the wall! The wall! The wall!” He struck Englehorn’s back a mighty blow. “There it is. Do you believe me now?” Just short of hysteria he half climbed, half slid down from the bridge and raced toward the bow of the ship. “Get out the boats!” he shouted back. “Get out the boats!”

  “Jack!” cried Ann. “Did you ever see anything like it? Isn’t it wonderful?”

  All the excitement drained out of Driscoll as he looked down at her face. His mouth tightened somberly. He strode forward to direct the lowering of the boats and the stowing of equipment.

  After a little, Denham came rushing back to where the crew were loading the boats, and Ann went down to him.

  “I’m going ashore with you, aren’t I?” she asked.

  “You bet!”

  Driscoll, overhearing, left his work promptly.

  “Ought she to quit the ship before we find out what’s going on…what we’re likely to run into?”

  “Look here, Jack!” Denham complained cheerfully. “Who’s running this show? I’ve learned by bitter experience to keep my cast and my cameras all together and right with me. How do I know when I’ll want ’em?”

  “But Mr. Denham!” Driscoll half turned from Ann, to keep her from hearing. “It’s crazy to risk….”

  “Get back to work, Jack,” Denham directed bluntly. “Go on! Deal out rifles and ammunition. See that a dozen of the gas bombs are taken. And pick me a couple of huskies to carry my picture stuff.”