Read Online Doc Savage: Skull Island (The Wild Adventures of Doc Savage) by Will Murray - Free Book Online

it.”
    “There, an old Hindu yogi taught me many skills. The power to control the mind. How to repress the emotions. To be master of one’s own body and brain.”
    “It was a subject thought fit to study—although I recall some dissent among the more rigidly scientific advisors,” allowed the captain.
    “The yogi was very skilled in the suppression of his own emotions,” continued Doc. “But he had a habit. He trilled like a songbird when he was excited by something.”
    “What does that have to do with you?”
    “I picked up the habit from him,” explained Doc.
    “Well, get rid of it!”
    “I have tried. But much of the time I don’t know that I am doing it. When I notice, I can shut it off. But not before.”
    Savage snapped, “It is a ridiculous and unbecoming sound for a grown man to make, Clark.”
    “I do not disagree,” replied Doc. “But I’m afraid that it has become a part of my mental makeup.”
    The elder Savage stared at his son a long time with his striking golden eyes, as if seeing him clearly for the first time in a very long while.
    “Perhaps it is a good thing that your training was interrupted,” he muttered at last.
    “How so?”
    “You are at risk of becoming a freak. It is not too late to school some of this infernal freakishness out of you.”
    Doc said nothing. He did not think that his trilling habit was that unfortunate—merely a strange side effect of a fantastic upbringing. He had long ago let go of the notion that he was a normal man. Savages were not normal. He was something more. Supernormal, possibly.
    After a while, Doc remarked without emotion, “I am what I am. I am the alloy that your single-minded will made of me.”
    “Room for improvement always exists,” said Savage Senior, pushing his plate back and rushing from his chair. “Let us be about our day, Mister Savage.”
    “Aye, Captain.”
    EMERGING onto the deck, they found the crew going about their business like the mute automatons that they were.
    Captain Savage took the wheel. He drew in a great breath, held it, and released it slowly, like a man exhaling the smoke of a particular flavorful and aromatic cigar.
    “First Mate, mark this air well.”
    Doc glanced over. “Sir?”
    “Draw it into your lungs. Hold it there.”
    Doc did so. He held it a long time before releasing it.
    “What do you smell, Mister Savage?”
    “Copra. Fish. Salt. Human sweat.”
    “Yes, yes. But the mixture. Commit the mixture of these smells to your memory. Your grandfather taught me to do this. You could place him on any deck in any sea on God’s green footstool and he could tell what part of the Arctic Ocean or the Banda Sea he was transiting by its unique conglomeration of local odors.”
    Doc inhaled a second time. This time, he let the aromas of the Java Sea pass more slowly along his olfactory receptors.
    “Give the mass a name,” Captain Savage suggested. “One that will fix the combination in your mind for future reference.”
    “I will call it ‘Java.’”
    The captain shook his head. “No. Too broad. This is but a part of the Java Sea. There are other parts. You must learn them all.”
    “To what end, Captain? I do not foresee a life on the sea.”
    “Your future is a blank slate—a tabula rasa. This knowledge will do you no harm and it may do you a great deal of good.”
    “Very well. ‘Middle Java’ it is.”
    “Carry on, Mister Savage.”
    Doc went in search of something to do. The Mayans ran the ship so tightly it was difficult to keep his hands busy during a normal passage.
    THEY passed northwest through the Greater Sunda Islands and into the Karimata Strait, into the lower reaches of the South China Sea. Doc tasted the air at every stage, committing it to memory, wondering what had been the life of his Grandfather Stormalong.
    He recalled hearing of a mythical Alfred Bulltop Stormalong, a New England sailor, of whom tall tales had been told. Captain Stormalong was a giant, a nautical Titan