machine gun.
Doc stood on the menacing arctic ice pack armed only with his tremendous muscles and his keen brain. He had no food. He had no tent, no bedding, no boat to cross leads in the ice.
Probably no one could have understood more fully than Doc the meaning of this. He was in a region so rugged, so bleak, that out of countless expeditions traveling on the ice and equipped with the finest of dog teams and food, few escaped a dire fate.
Yet one beholding the quiet composure of the bronze man's features would have thought he didn't realize what he was up against. Doc's giant figure was striking, even swathed as it was in fur garments.
He roamed the vicinity of the wrecked planes for an hour. Nothing did he find to indicate his five friends still lived. So Doc went to meet Victor Vail.
VICTOR VAIL was above the average physically. In an ordinary group of men, he would have stood out as being rather athletic.
He had progressed a scant half mile from where Doc had sighted him from the plane. His breath sobbed through his teeth. He tottered, near exhaustion. He was indeed glad to see the bronze man.
Doc Savage had covered thrice the distance negotiated by Victor Vail. Yet Doc's bronze sinews were unstrained. He breathed normally. He might have been taking a stroll down Park Avenue.
'Your friends!' gasped Victor Vail. 'Did you find them safe?'
Doc Savage shook a slow negative. 'I found where their plane sank through a hole in the ice. That was all.'
Victor Vail sagged down wearily, disconsolately.
'I heard the plane crash,' he murmured. 'I was making for the spot. I could not see the crash, because of the haze. But Keelhaul de Rosa's hired killers shot them down.'
Doc made no sound. Victor Vail nipped his lips, then continued.
'Your five friends forced me to leave the plane by parachute — to save my life,' he murmured. 'Others of the five could have escaped. Yet they chose to fight together, to the end. They were brave men.'
Doc still made no sound. The moment was too pregnant with sorrow to be shattered by cold words.
'What do we do now?' Victor Vail queried at length.
'We'll find the lost liner Oceanic,' Doc replied. 'And we will find Keelhaul de Rosa.'
The chill ferocity in the bronze giant's expressive voice made Victor Vail shiver. At that instant, he wouldn't have traded places with Keelhaul de Rosa for all the wealth in the world, with a safe return to New York City thrown in. Keelhaul de Rosa was going to feel the kind of justice this mighty bronze man dealt.
THEY SET a course for the uncharted land.
'What about Ben O'Gard?' questioned Victor Vail. 'Do we still have him and his crew of devils to fight?'
'The Helldiver submerged with all aboard,' Doc replied. 'I had that valve off the tanks with me.'
Victor Vail gestured as if tossing something away. 'We're rid of them, then. Water will flood the submarine through the hole left by the missing valve.'
A vast quaking and rumbling seized the ice pack. They became aware that a wind had sprung up. This gave signs of increasing to a gale. The ice was beginning to shift. It was as though they strode the white, heaving, crusted paunch of a great monster of cold.
A crevice opened unexpectedly. Victor Vail toppled on the brink. He slipped into space. But strong bronze fingers snatched him back.
The crevice closed as swiftly as it had opened. It made a ghastly crunching. Chunks of ice flew high in the air. The frozen monster might have been angry at being cheated of a victim, and was spitting its teeth out in a rage.
It was several minutes before Victor Vail could still the trembling of his knees.
'What a ghastly region!' he muttered.
'There must be a hard storm to the southward,' Doc explained. 'It is causing a movement of the ice field.'
The going was incredibly rough. Sheer blocks of bergs jutted up everywhere. Many were as large as houses. Occasionally these toppled over. Sometimes they piled one atop the other after the fashion of cards shuffled together. These occurrences were without warning.
Twice more, Victor Vail was saved by his giant bronze companion.
'I shall never be able to pay my debt of gratitude to you,' the violinist said feelingly.
Doc had a two-word reply to all such protestations.
'Forget it,' he said.
As they neared land, the seemingly impossible happened — the going became harder. The arctic ice pack was at its worst. Summer, such as it was, was in full swing. The sun had been shining steadily for two months. This had rotted the ice enough that it broke up under a brisk blow.
Doc now virtually carried Victor Vail. Time after time, ice pinnacles crashed upon the very spot where they stood. But in some magic manner, the mighty bronze man always managed to get himself and the violinist in the clear.
The air was filled with a cracking and rumbling so loud as to almost produce deafness. They might have been in the midst of a raging battle.
'You can tell your grandchildren you went through about the worst danger nature can offer,' Doc said grimly. 'For sheer, terrifying menace, nothing quite equals a storm with the arctic ice pack breaking up under foot.'
Victor Vail made no reply. Doc glanced at him sharply.
Tears stood in Victor Vail's eyes.
Doc's chance remark about grandchildren had made Victor Vail think of his long-lost daughter, Roxey.
THEY BRAVED an inferno for the next few minutes; an inferno of ice and wind. Pressure was forcing the pack ice high on the shore of the uncharted land. Frozen death crashed and lurched everywhere.
Doc Savage made it through in safety. He carried Victor Vail under one thewed arm, seeming not to feel the burden at all.
'We licked it,' Doc said dryly. 'The storm accounts for the thick haze we've had the last few days.'
They hurried inland. Their mukluks stilt trod ice. It lay below to a depth of many feet. Occasional ridges of dark, impermeable stone rammed unlovely fangs out of the white waste.
The wind hooted and shrieked. Sometimes it whirled the two men along like crumpled balls of paper.
They mounted higher. The glacier thinned. The dark stone reared in greater profusion.
Doc Savage halted suddenly. He poised, motionless, metallic. No breath steam came from his strong lips.
'What is it?' breathed Victor Vail.
Doc released breath from his mighty lungs. It made a spurting plume that frosted on the fur of his parka. The air was turning colder.
'Something is stalking us!' Doc said dryly.
Victor Vail was astounded. His own senses were very keen — made so by the years when he had been blind, and depended upon them. But he had heard nothing.
'I caught the odor of it,' Doc explained.
Amazement gripped Victor Vail. He had not known this strange bronze man, through unremitting exercise, had developed the olfactory keenness of a wild thing.
Doc Savage pressed Victor Vail into a convenient crevasse. 'Stay here!' Doc commanded. 'Don't leave the spot. You might become lost!'
The void of shrieking wind swallowed Doc's bronze form. He glided to the right. His speed was amazing.
A few flakes of snow came sizzling through the gale. More followed. They were hard as fine hailstones. When Doc flattened close to a rock spine to listen, the snow sounded like sand on the stone. He heard
