lieutenants, which he calls the inner circle of his Cult of the Moccasin, it will be unnecessary to do any wholesale killing. The other swamp men, freed from the Gray Spider's sinister influence, can be reformed.'
Doc now advanced a few yards. He carried a hand grenade—one which did not contain gas. He plucked out the firing pin and lobbed the metal egg into the morass.
It exploded with an ear-splitting roar.
The blast caused silence to seize momentarily upon the low hill. The voodoo men were surprised, uneasy.
Into the void of quiet rolled Doc Savage's words. Now, more than ever, was the amazing quality of penetration apparent in the bronze man's voice. It seemed to gather some of the elusive nature of Doc's strange trilling sound, for, without being in the least loud or blaring, it filtered to every part of the hill.
'We have the gas and the masks!' Doc told the voodoo men. 'To attack us will mean death for you! The wind will sweep the gas to you!'
AT this threatening declaration, the silence deepened. It became an uneasy pall.
Suddenly, an order crashed among the voodoo men.
'He's right! We can't rush them. Draw back into the swamp! We'll get them if they try to leave the hill!'
It was the Gray Spider speaking.
Doc's men exchanged puzzled looks.
'Glory be!' gulped Monk. 'Did you notice—'
In giving the command to his voodoo followers, the Gray Spider had been forced to lift his tone to a yell.
'I’ll say I noticed it!' Renny snapped. 'That voice is familiar! I've heard it somewhere!'
'So have I!' Monk said mildly. 'But I can't place it.'
Renny offered: 'Maybe Doc can!'
With a start, Renny bit off his words.
Doc had vanished! There had been no sound. They had noticed no stir in the pale moonlight that splattered through the canopy of swamp vegetation. Yet the mighty bronze form was no longer in their midst; he had slipped away as if on a moonbeam.
'Doc has gone after the Gray Spider alone!' Ham clipped.
Ham had made a good guess. At the precise moment he spoke, Doc was two-score yards away. The russet metal hue of his skin, the dark color of his garments, rendered him nearly invisible, even when he crossed patches of moonlight.
At the foot of the hill, the swamp tangle reared like a wall. A great leap sent the bronze man upward. His case-hardened fingers found a limb. The branch bent some under his great weight, but made little noise.
A voodoo man near by saw the foliage sway. He got the most fleeting glimpse of a figure that might have been a metallic bat. There had been no noise. The swamp man blinked, thinking a dark, night-flying moth was before his eyes. When he looked again, the strange vision was gone.
He galloped off, muttering of voodoo curses and evil spirits. He couldn't understand what he had seen.
Nor would he have believed his eyes, had he observed the flashing speed with which a Herculean bronze man traversed the aлrial lanes of the interlaced swamp vegetation. No squirrel or anthropoid jungle dweller could have shown more uncanny ability.
Sometimes creepers draped in tree-tops parted under the weight of the bronze giant. But he never fell far before his sure fingers found fresh grip. Nor did these breath-taking drops seem to bother him in the least.
Deep in the morass, the voodoo man had stopped to catch his breath.
Suddenly a voice came out of the murk beside him.
— vare ees de Gray Spider?' it asked. 'Me—I got plentee important message fo' heem.'
The voodoo man thought it was one of his fellows. 'Dunno vare Gray Spider ees! Him go away—not tell anybody vare to!'
The silence of a tomb followed. The voodoo man got curious. He investigated. He found no trace of whoever had spoken.
Several other swamp men had almost identical experiences. No one discovered who had addressed them in the debased jargon of their kind. Not one dreamed it was the mighty bronze man they feared.
For Doc Savage was seeking the Gray Spider—seeking with all his great resource of muscle and brain—and seeking in vain!
Chapter XV. THE BUZZING DEATH
DAWN!
Periodic, vicious little storms were sweeping the voodoo hill in the great swamp. The storms were lead— driven by the machine guns of the voodoo men. The little devils completely ringed the hill around.
Trees sheltered them. Foliage concealed them. An army of forty thousand men would have had trouble stamping them out. When danger threatened one particular group, they had but to fire and lose themselves in the steaming, cankerous morass.
Doc and his five men were in a state of siege upon the hill. They had ripped planks off the shacks of Buck Boontown's settlement, and used them to scoop out gun pits. In these they had installed the machine guns which they had taken from their erstwhile swamp guards.
Employing the same planks, they had rigged substantial dugouts—a precaution that proved highly worth while.
'Listen!' Monk barked. 'There's a plane coming!'
The craft soon swept into view. It dived on the hill. Crude bombs, fizzing fuses attached, dropped overside.
Exploding, these threw up great fountains of mud and vegetation. Thanks to the dugouts, no harm was inflicted upon Doc and his men.
'Get that crate!' Doc directed. 'It may come back with more efficient bombs!'
The rapid-firers snarled in chorus. Ragged patches appeared in the wings of the plane. The craft banked away. Apparently it was not seriously damaged. Now it was lost to view, flying very low.
But a few minutes later, the sound of the engine suddenly ceased. A short silence, a gruesome whistling of wind through flying wires—and a resounding crash!
'Motor conked!' Monk grinned. 'From the sound of it, he made a landing he won't walk away from.'
'I think we riddled his gas tank,' Doc offered. Only his keen golden eyes had discerned the leakage of gasoline from the plane as it departed.
'We're all set here!' Monk chuckled. 'Regular little war! And we could fight for a year without anybody in the outside world being the wiser.'
'Can you go without eating for a year?' Ham asked sarcastically.
'Huh?'
'Maybe you haven't noticed our lack of grub?'
'Yeah—I knowed there was somethin' I had missed,' Monk grinned. 'It was my breakfast ham—the six slices I eat daily in your honor!'
Ham scowled threateningly at the big, homely Monk. Any reference to a porker that Monk made was always
