Lester Dent - The Fantastic Island

Doc Savage Magazine #34 December/1935

The disappearance of William Harper Littlejohn attracted no public attention whatever. The reason for this was simple. The public never learned about it.

William Harper Littlejohn was a very famous man. It was impossible that if 10 average men on the street should be stopped and asked who 'William Harper Littlejohn' was, they would not have had the slightest idea. But in his field, William Harper Littlejohn was tops. His field was archaeology and geology. Wherever men are interested in such things, he was known.

William Harper Littlejohn's disappearance was simple. He had chartered a ship and was taking an archaeological expedition to the Galapagos Islands below the Equator in the Pacific Ocean. The Galapagos are said to be the World's strangest islands. William Harper Littlejohn simply disappeared. The ship vanished also. As well as the whole expedition!

It could not have been that their radio merely failed. There were 3 radio transmitters on the expedition ship. No, there was some other reason. It was strange.

Just how strange it was, no one had any idea at the beginning of the thing.

William Harper Littlejohn happened to be one of the 5 men associated with that remarkable Man of MysteryDoc Savage. Word of his disappearance reached Doc Savage at his New York Headquarters. Doc Savage acted promptly.

Two of Doc Savage's aides he had 5 of them altogether were on a vacation cruise in the yacht Seven Seas, which chanced to be off the coast of Panama in the Pacific. Also aboard the yacht was Patricia Savage a remarkable young woman whose relationship to Doc Savage was that of cousin. Pat had gone along for the trip, she claimed. But it was to be suspected that she was also looking for excitement!

If she was looking for excitement, she was certainly destined to find it!

Doc Savage Man of Bronze, individual of mystery, mental wizard, and physical marvel to quote the newspapers sent a radiogram to the yacht Seven Seas headed for the Galapagos to look for William Harper Littlejohn who was better known as 'Johnny' and his expedition.

The Seven Seas was now about to slam headlong into more trouble than those aboard would ever have believed possible.

-

The Seven Seas was riding a radio beam radiated by special courtesy on the part of the powerful United States Naval radio station from the Panama Canal Zone. This beam simplified navigation, and they were riding it straight for the Galapagos.

Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks stood on the dripping deck of the Seven Seas and stared into an immensity of black sky and blacker water. Occasionally he scowled anxiously upward at the radio rigging. Water slapped and phosphoresced around the bow.

Right now, the yacht was rolling in a huge ground swell, rolling alarmingly. Rivets strained and bulkheads creaked. There was at least half a gale blowing. It made noises in the rigging like the sighs of dying men.

Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks was commonly called 'Ham'. It was a nickname which he did not like. He now frowned darkly and made his way to the pitching bridge.

"This is dangerous!" he snapped. "We may run onto a reef any minute."

"Don't I know it!" a surprisingly child-like voice retorted from the semidarkness of the bridge. "This ground swell is bad. Mighty bad! When it piles up like this, it means the water is getting shallow."

Ham snapped, "But I thought you said "

"Something screwy," piped the child-like voice. "According to your log, we're supposed to have more than a hundred miles between us and the nearest land."

A young woman joined them on the bridge. She was a very striking young woman to look at, having not only a lovely face but also hair of a very unusual bronze color and eyes which actually looked golden. She was Patricia Savage, and she loved excitement.

"I wish you'd ask your old ocean to behave," she requested cheerfully. "I've been thrown out of my bunk 3 times in the last 15 minutes. I gave it up."

"Something is wrong, Pat," Ham told her. "We're getting into a big ground swell. That means we are near land or at least in shoal water. And that is very much impossible!"

Pat walked over to the second man on the bridge. "Just what is the trouble, Monk?" she asked.

The man addressed as 'Monk' sat in the shadows, hunched like a bulky Buddha over an audio-frequency amplifier. His thick hands indicated the apparatus containing vacuum tubes for increasing the voltage and power of radio beacon signals.

"These direction-finding doodads have gone plain haywire!" he insisted in that small squeaky voice.

Ham joined them and listened to the signal pulsations coming from the loudspeaker. He said, "The beat frequency is sounding just as it should. We are certainly not off the course as broadcast to us from the Government radio beacon in the Canal Zone."

"We're right in the beam, all right," Monk grunted. "The 'A' wave is jammed with the 'N' waves so you don't hear any dots just a blur of dashes. We can't be off our course. But we must be!"

"Impossible!" snapped Ham. "Our goniometer with its new type amplifier developed by Doc Savage himself insures that the direction finder couldn't go wrong. And the United States Government station is transmitting the beam to us."

-

The word exchange had the rather unexpected effect of throwing Monk into what looked like a very violent rage.

"You tellin' me, you courtroom fop?" Monk growled belligerently at Ham.

"Don't get tough with me, you missing link!" Ham snapped. "I'll make shark bait out of you."

Monk pushed back from the radio apparatus and squared off threateningly before Ham.

"Who says I'm wrong?" he demanded in a voice no longer mouse-like.

"I did, you ape!" Ham snapped.

"You're a liar besides bein' a shyster lawyer," Monk bellowed. "I'm right! And you know darned well that I'm right!"

Pat said dryly, "I wonder if either of you know what you're quarreling over."

The 2 men pretended not to hear. Ham and Monk seemed always on the point of taking each other apart violently. The mildest word from one was likely to set the other off in a rage. But it was only on rare occasions that their enmity extended beyond the talking stage.

Patricia Savage cast an idle glance around the horizon. She started violently.

"Look!" she cried. "Ahead there a bit to port. Green and red lights!"

"Huh?" Monk jerked around. "That sounds like channel lights."

Ham stared intently, forgot himself and his feud with Monk. "Channel lights they are. But they were not there a minute ago."

Monk's small eyes rapidly. "It ain't possible."

"Some mistake," Ham muttered. "No lights are indicated on the chart."

Pat pointed at them and said "There they are!" with inescapable feminine logic.

Ham and Monk crowded forward for another inspection of the charts. They offered a strange contrast in appearance these 2 men. Ham was meticulously attired in a blue marine uniform and a blue cap with its insignia in gold set jauntily on his head. He carried a slender black cane. He was handsome, lithe, and wore his clothes like a fashion plate.

On the contrary, Monk wore a not-too-white pair of duck pants. They wrinkled across the thighs and bagged at the knees. An enormous green-and-white-striped undershirt fitted around his barrel chest like a circus tent slipped on over an elephant. Rusty hair stuck out on his bullet-like head like mashed bristles on a wire brush. The hair grew low down on his forehead, half burying his ears, almost meeting his scrubby eyebrows. His homely face was mostly mouth and flat nose. His body was nearly as wide as it was long and his fists hung down almost to his knees. In fact, he did not look like a man. He resembled an amiable ape.