Li Shoon's Nine Lives/Chapter 15

NAVAL battle between us and the Sumatran!" cried Doctor Fleming, athrill with the pepperish prospect.

Boom! sounded the Vulcan's gun. A few seconds later the watchers saw the shell strike one of the Budzibu's launches. There was a cloud of smoke, a geyser of salt water. Then the launch vanished, blown to atoms, while her late crew struggled in the water.

Boom! That shot struck fifty feet astern of the second launch, doing no harm. Wincing, Ensign Olney fired a third shell. The second launch, after a few seconds, had followed the first.

"Go in to rescue the men, pirates though they are!" Olney shouted toward the bridge. At the same time the ensign kept his gaze toward the Budzibu, for he could see that she mounted two nine-pounder guns forward, and an effective shell from either of these would be enough to sink the unarmored Vulcan.

Carrick, at the port rail, a little behind the gunners, held glasses to his eyes, as did Fleming. On the deck forward they' could make out both Li Shoon and Weng-yu—could even read the astounded expressions on their yellow faces. Ten feet behind them stood Ming.

And then the all-but-incredible thing happened. The Budzibu, as though realizing the hopelessness of conflict against the Vulcan's 4.7, swung around, her bow away from the gallant intruder, as though declining conflict.

"It's strange that one of Li Shoon's temper should prefer capture!" gasped the Hound.

"Maybe he doesn't," hinted the chemist.

"Butt [sic] he has pointed his guns away from us."

"Watch him! Doctor Li is a man of deadly resource."

Apparently Ensign Olney's suspicions, too, had been aroused, for he abandoned his humane purpose of rescuing the launches' crews, and ordered another change in the Vulcan's course.

"What can Li Shoon do?" Carrick wondered, as he saw the 4.7 trained on the Sumatran yacht.

"He won't keep us guessing long," Fleming ventured, nor did his guess go astray.

A minute of inaction passed—a minute of the kind that lives ever afterward in men's minds. Then a tremendous, half-muffled roar shook the air. Through the forward deck of the Budzibu belched a crater of flame and smoke. Pitching like a living thing in the death throe, the Budzibu began settling by the head. "Run in as close as you dare, sir, to rescue survivors!" shouted Ensign Olney.

Ahead forged the Vulcan, yet before she arrived the Budzibu had vanished from sight under the waters.

"Not even my gun could have worked half the havoc of that internal explosion," gasped Olney, turning to Carrick. Your Chinese prince of crime must have given thorough thought to mining a ship like that."

While the Sea King still lay to, the Vulcan searched in vain for trace of a single survivor, either from the Budzibu or her two launches. The destruction had been complete. Li's pirates, knowing well their fate at the law's hands, if caught, had preferred to drown. All the mystery of master and owner, of the yacht's strange charter, had gone down with the Budzibu.

"Li Shoon has at last given up, by his own hand, his ninth and last life!" uttered Donald Carrick solemnly.

When all chance of saving survivors had been given up, the Vulcan ran over alongside the Sea King, lying to at a safe interval, to be greeted with tumultuous cheers from the liner.

"I want to tell you, Captain Bickford, that you did your part in a magnificent manner!" Donald Carrick shouted through a megaphone to the Sea King's skipper. "You will find yourself well, though not sufficiently rewarded by the Blue Stack Company when you reach Frisco. You will now, of course, proceed on your way under the speed you prefer."

With another interchange of cheers, and much blowing of whistles, the Sea King, which really carried no gold at all in her strong room, and which had acted under secret naval instructions, altered to a course farther offshore and proceeded on her homeward way.

The Vulcan kept somewhat inshore, going at full speed until she overhauled a Mexican coastwise fishing smack a few miles north of Mattanegua. To the master of that little craft Carrick shouted information as to where the half dozen soldiers of Calvoras' rebel outpost would be found tied to the trees.

From there a nearly record run was made to the spot indicated on Li Shoon's map. Between the aid furnished by that document, and what he had overheard in the talk between Li and Weng-yu, Carrick was occupied but a few hours in finding an artificial cave, wonderfully constructed and concealed, in which was found, intact, the hoard of four and a half million dollars taken from the Halcyon and the Spokane. This, money was transferred to the Vulcan, and started on the way to its rightful owners in San Francisco.

In San Francisco the ever-active reporters got wind of enough of the story so that the rest of it was given out at the Blue Stack line offices. Over the United States and the world flashed the news that Doctor Li's ninth and last life had been offered up and canceled by Li himself.

Carrick and Fleming did not linger in the city of the Golden Gate. After settling their financial affairs with the Blue Stack Company, they hastened East.

On the day of his arrival in New York, Doctor John Fleming was joyfully able to confide to his friend his hour-new marriage to Miss Sylvia Dorrance.

"I shall not again have to fear for her safety in connection with Doctor Li," Fleming declared, with a heartfelt sigh.

"For any other human being's tragic death I might feel sorrow," Donald Carrick answered. "Li Shoon's death, under even more terrible circumstances, can only fill me with entire satisfaction."

"Will the Ui Kwoon Ah-how live after this?" inquired the doctor.

"It may," replied the Master Hound, "but it will be confined to China. Only the evil genius of a Li Shoon could make the Ui Kwoon a world-wide menace, and there is but one Doctor Li born in a thousand years!"