FOR a moment, the superstitious guards must have thought the big reptile had actually turned into the bronze giant they believed one of its kind had devoured. Astonishment held them paralyzed.
Doc hurled his 'gator masquerade at them. It was but the hide of one of the reptiles, cleverly mounted. It was heavy, though. It flew true. One guard went over backward.
Another guard emitted a howl of alarm. His aircraft-type machine gun cut loose. The recoil of the powerful weapon shook the strange harness about his middle, threatening to tear him to pieces. Empty cartridges chased each other over the floor like brassy mice.
In his haste, the man forgot to exert the proper science in holding his weapon down. It got away from him. The stream of slugs cut through the plank walls like a slasher saw.
The fellow saw the bronze giant whip toward him. He sought to retreat. A terrific blow felled him.
A knife glinted in the pale light over the roped forms of the five prisoners. It slashed with the nice precision of a machine. Ropes fell away.
'Yeo-o-ow!' bellowed Monk. He reared to his feet, roaring, snorting.
Outside the shack, a swamp man was creeping along the wall. His wizened figure could be seen through the inch-wide cracks between the up-and-down wall planks.
Monk took two quick steps. His two hundred and sixty pounds of gristle, bone, and stiff red hair sailed upward. Feet first, Monk hit the wall. Planks split, crashed, caved. He went through the wall like a ball from a muzzle-loading cannon.
The swamp man met destruction in the wreckage.
The swamp men possessed an animal-like bravery. Where-as beings with more brains would have fled, they stood and fought—and quickly found their Waterloo.
Renny's big fist took one amidship. All the starch left the fellow. He draped loose as a dirty shirt over the gallon of knuckles which had hit him.
The bronze flash that was Doc Savage in action accounted for the others.
Ham found his sword cane. One of the unlucky guards had been carrying it. Ham unsheathed the razor- sharp, flexible blade. It sang like a big tuning fork in his hand.
'Yeo-o-ow!' bawled Monk. 'I ain't even warmed up!'
'You will be!' clipped Ham. 'You'll probably be on fire, before this is over! There's only a few hundred of the voodoo devils left!'
BEDLAM had broken out on the hill above the settlement. The greenish snake of fire burning within the hollow cast a lurid glow on the jungle immediately adjacent. The hilltop might have been the gullet of some bloated dragon.
Against the emerald luminance, ugly figures were silhouetted. Barbaric, savage forms, these were—except for the fearsome killing machines many wore harnessed to their bodies.
They had heard the prisoners escaping. They poured down the hill.
'Come!' Doc's single word was low, calm. But it had the effect of an explosive.
He glided away into the night.
His five men followed. They knew Doc had some plan. They couldn't imagine what it was. They were hopelessly outnumbered. Should they take to the swamp, Doc alone stood a chance of escaping. The swamp men, knowing the intricacies of the vast and entangled morass, would overhaul any one of lesser physical ability. Doc would never desert his men. Hence they knew he must have some other scheme for coping with their immediate peril.
Machine guns searched the festering growth with whistling, popping streams of lead. The slugs sickled off branches and leaves. Violent rolls of rapid echoes gamboled over the low hill.
Amid all that discord, Doc and his men could talk without attracting attention.
'How did you do it, Doc?' Ham questioned. 'I mean—when the car went into the bayou? I'd have sworn we saw a 'gator making a meal out of you.'
'What you saw was merely a trick to make the swamp men think I was done for,' Doc replied. 'I thrust an arm into the jaws of that stuffed alligator, then pushed the head out of the water and shook it. Naturally, it looked as if one of the huge reptiles had me.'
'What I want to know is, where the stuffed 'gator came from?' Long Tom put in.
'What is the best masquerade a man could don to move about in this swamp?' Doc countered.
'That's easy!' Long Tom chuckled. 'Pass himself off as an alligator!'
'Exactly,' said Doc. 'That stuffed 'gator was in the rumble seat of the roadster. It was one of the things I brought along into the swamp, on the chance we might need it. I simply dived and got it, after the car went into the water. The thing could be folded up in a fairly small space, for all its large size. And it looked natural enough to fool the swamp men, especially when seen only by moonlight. In the daytime, they might not have been deceived so easily.'
'Maybe,' replied Long Tom. 'But the way it was, it sure ran a whizzer on everybody concerned.'
A note of regret now came into Doc's powerful, expressive voice.
'I am sorry I had to deceive you along with the swamp men,' he said, 'but it could not be helped. And there was also nothing else to do but let you fall into the hands of the Gray Spider's men. To have attempted to spirit you away under water would only have meant you would be drowned.'
Doc and his five men were working around the hill as they conversed.
'Where we goin'?' Monk inquired.
'Wet your finger and hold it up,' Doc suggested.
Monk complied. 'Huh—you mean that now we're gettin' the wind at our backs?'
'That's the idea. As you may have noticed, I did some scouting around in the course of the night. In fact, I'll venture to assure you, brothers, that there is scarcely a square yard of this hill over which Doc 'Alligator' Savage did not crawl. Among other things, I made a find which, unless I'm far mistaken, will be our salvation.'
Ham thought of something. 'Say—there was a real alligator, wasn't there? I saw that half-wit kid playing with one like it was a dog.'
'There was,' Doc agreed. 'I have both the boy and his unusual pet tied up in the near-by swamp. Neither have been harmed—nor will they be. Unknowingly, they did us a good turn. Things would not have been nearly so simple, had the swamp men not been accustomed to seeing this alligator around.'
Loud yells denoted the voodoo men were taking the trail of Doc and his friends. Pine-knot torches flamed. They cast fitful, dancing shadows. The hot white rods of modern flashlights mingled with them.
Random bursts were loosened frequently from machine guns. These never did anything more annoying than shower Doc and his five men with bark, twigs, and leaves.
'Kinda reminds me of the big scrap in France!' Monk's mild voice was more than ever a surprising contrast. It hardly seemed possible the boisterous, animallike bellowings he emitted while in action could come from the same source as the sleepy, soft words.
'Well, the wind is at our backs!' Renny announced. 'So what?'
'So this!' Doc pointed.
Before them reared the white, ghostly stub of a dead tree. Lightning had apparently shattered it long ago. The bark was gone. Cracks gaped in the pale wood. Patches of foul green fungus spotted it.
Doc quickly wrenched away a section of the lifeless trunk. A cavity was revealed. The trunk was hollow.
The cache held a number of boxes about the size of apple crates. One of these had been opened.
'I investigated,' Doc explained. 'Two of those boxes hold ordinary hand grenades. The others contain a supply of poison-gas grenades. It's the same kind of deadly gas the Gray Spider has twice sought to use on us. The wind will carry it over our foes.'
'Glory be!' enthused Monk. 'And that ain't the half of it! There's gas masks along with the stuff!'
The masks were swiftly hauled out. Monk, Renny, Long Tom, Ham, and Johnny donned them. But Doc Savage delayed.
'We will use the gas only as a last resort,' he pointed out 'After all, the fiendishness of these swamp men is largely due to one man—the Gray Spider. If we can get the master devil and the group of his important
