Chapter 21

THE CRAWLING TERROR

IT WAS difficult to locate the enraged voice in the hollowly-resounding passages. Doc led the rush for the spot from which it seemed to emanate.

“He was tied up the last I saw of him,” the bronze man offered quietly. “He must have gotten loose. He is tremendously strong.”

“A living example of how effective this Fountain of Youth is,” Ham agreed.

Dan Thunden evidently had a gun — for it roared in the cavern.

Monk grunted loudly and fell down, but heaved up again, grimly silent.

“Are you hurt badly?” Doc demanded.

“My leg,” said Monk. “I can still navigate.”

Dan Thunden became terrified at their advance and fled. Knowing every cranny of the caverns as he did, he traveled so swiftly that they barely managed to keep within earshot of his footsteps.

“Where’s he headin’ for?” Renny pondered aloud.

“There’s a heavy wooden door which shuts off a part of the cavern,” Doc explained. “He seems to be making for that.”

“What’s behind the door?”

“The things which made that skeleton we found on the beach, and turned Hallet into one like it,” Doc replied.

They found the bones of unfortunate Hallet shortly afterward. They were scattered, for some of Santini’s gang had evidently given them a kick in passing.

Johnny was weak, and being helped along by Renny. Pat kept close to Doc’s side, along with Kel Avery, whose hysteria had subsided magically at the return of danger.

“That old man is dangerous,” Pat warned. “If we don’t head him off, he’ll entomb us in here and turn his pets, or whatever is behind that door, loose on us.

They soon caught sight of Dan Thunden. He had opened the massive door with the secret fastener, and was just passing through. His form towered fully eight feet off the floor.

“He’s on stilts!” Long Tom barked. “What d’you think of that!”

“I think he’s thinking fast,” Doc said grimly. “And we haven’t much time. Get that door shut. Let him go, if necessary.”

But Thunden had other plans for the door. He spun, facing the glare of their flashlights, and thrust a hand into a coat pocket. Bringing out a small object of metal, he threw it’

A hand grenade! The thing arched toward them. But not far! Doc’s hands, as usual, were empty of guns. The only thing he held was a flashlight. He threw that.

Flashlight and grenade met in the air, a little nearer them than Dan Thunden, and almost in the big door. There was a white flash, a roar, and the inevitable rush of air.

Johnny and Renny both upset, as did Pat and Kel Avery. Doc himself was staggered. The door split and the massive timbers made a great noise falling to the floor.

Dan Thunden on his tall stilts was overbalanced. He toppled, tried to balance himself against one stone wall, and in doing so, bore his entire weight on one stilt. The stilt snapped off.

The old man fell squarely on his white-thatched head.

A weird thing happened to the floor about him. Seemingly, it came to life and began to undulate and crowd toward where Thunden lay. In fractional seconds, the rusty-looking floor spread over the prone form, covering it, until Thunden’s body resembled only a rugged hump of reddish-black sand. There was a great frying noise.

“Too late to help him!” Doc rapped. “Let’s get out of here.” They ran back the way they had been coming, fleeing from the horror on the cavern floor. Not until they had gone scores of yards did they discover that the concussion of the exploding grenades had in spots jarred great rock fragments from the ceiling.

Farther on, the way was entirely blocked.

“Blazes!” Monk muttered, resting his injured leg. “How are we gonna get to Santini’s outfit?”

They were not to get to Santini, it developed, for they could not find an opening large enough to crawl through — and behind them grew the sound that was like the gentle popping of hot grease into which an egg had been broken.

They gave up the effort to reach Santini, found an exit, and climbed out into the sunlight.

JOHNNY WAS the last to leave the cavern. He sat on the lip of the hole through which the others had scrambled, squinting his eyes in the hot evening sunlight, listening to the frying sound below.

“What was that thing we saw?” Kel Avery asked thickly.

“You mean the things that got your great — “

“Yes, the things that covered my greatgrandfather, Dali Thunden,” said the actress.

“Carnivorous jormicoidea,” Johnny told her.

Monk glared at him and snapped, “I ain’t in a good humor! Use little words for once, will you!”

“Ants,” said Johnny. “Flesh-eating ants. Isn’t that right Doc?”

The bronze man nodded. “They used one part of the cavern for their colony. That is undoubtedly why Dan Thunden shut it off with that door.”

Monk leaned back and sighed, “So it was that simple! And I had visioned a new menace that was threatening mankind.”

The voracious ants, literally millions of them, were not a menace to be taken lightly, they discovered in the days following. it was necessary to be always on guard against the carnivorous insects, for they traveled in armies and their bites induced a poison, if suffered in sufficient number, that would render a victim helpless. Woe to the man whom the insects came upon when asleep.

The ants were not, Doc explained repeatedly, of a species new to science.

Their stay at the island was to dig out the entombed Santini and his men. But they found only bones. There had been cracks large enough to admit the voracious ants.

The store of siphium was intact, and Doc, searching, located growing plants on the cay. These were carefully dug up, packed, and made ready for transportation to the United States.

Monk tried out some of the silphium tea on his wounded leg, and the results were remarkable. The puncture began to heal almost at once.

“Boy, we’ve got something,” Monk insisted. “We’ve cornered the Fountain of Youth!”

Doc did not disillusion him at that moment. The bronze man suspected that old Dan Thunden’s longevity was due to perfect health — that, of course, the result of drinking silphium tea — and the fact that Thunden, an exile on the is!and, had been kept away from the distractions and dissipations of civilization which might undermine health.

That the silphium was only a valuable medicinal herb proved correct, for it was an amazingly efficient antiseptic and tonic, a disease preventative. But they did not learn that until months later, after a number of scientists and doctors had made careful experiments.

Doc and his party got their plane ready to leave Fear Cay. They had found the missing motor parts.

“I just thought of one thing that ain’t been cleared up yet,” Monk said in sudden excitement as they were loading Up.

“What?” Doc questioned.

“The package of silphium that Kel Avery sent by air mail from Florida,” explained Monk.

“That is in New York,” Doc told him.

“Huh?”

“Remember when I talked to the air mail officials?” Doc countered.

“Sure. But nobody heard you, except the mail people.”

“I told them to open the package, take out the real contents, and substitute something which looked similar,” Doc said. “They did.

“

Pat looked at the bronze man and asked, “Do you ever overlook anything?”

THE END