Merian C. Cooper's King Kong by Joe DeVito

Author:Joe DeVito
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

12

SKULL ISLAND

MARCH 13, 1933

Driscoll burned with the urge to resume the chase, though the business of lashing together the logs didn’t take long. By the time the sailors had finished their work, the craft looked sturdy enough. Jimmy and a couple of others cut long saplings they could use to pole their way across the water, and together the party shoved the raft down the slope, launched it on what looked like a river of fog, and climbed aboard. It was a tight fit, and Denham carefully made sure that Jimmy stowed the crate of gas bombs in the center. “Don’t get the guns wet, whatever you do,” he warned.

“Shove off!” Driscoll ordered, and the men leaned on their poles. The log raft moved with a jerk and a clumsy roll that made the men at the rear stagger.

Denham gave Driscoll a sardonic sideways look. “This is your first independent command. Guess I’ll have to call you Captain Driscoll from now on.”

“Stow it,” Driscoll said, but not sharply. “Say, this really is wider than I thought. It’s not a river here. More like a lake or a lagoon. I still can’t see the far side.” Driscoll carefully balanced himself, not daring to give in to the uncertain feeling of floating inside a choking fog. He wondered about the nerve of the crew. The dinosaur’s attack had shaken them, no question, but none of them had given up. Driscoll recognized their forced jocularity as the response of men under pressure. Building the raft had steadied them, but he knew they all sensed the danger was just beginning.

He knew they cared for Ann, maybe not as much as he did, but to a man they felt protective of the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. He hoped he could call on that devotion if things became rough. Meanwhile, he had other worries. The raft proved a hard craft to manage, and the men grumbled at each other as it dipped and tried to spin. “Easy,” Driscoll warned them. “We’ve got to be careful of the balance. Keep those strokes easy.”

The men leaned into their poles—poles that now were more than two-thirds their length underwater at every stroke—and as some of them stuck in the muck at the bottom of the lagoon, the leading edge of the raft bit into the water and a wave washed over Driscoll’s ankles.

One edge of the raft went awash. “Close in,” he said. “Keep your weight well toward center.”

“Gonna have to paddle soon,” one of the sailors said. He practically had to kneel to find a purchase with his pole.

The poles were no good as paddles, but Driscoll had thought of that and had thrown a few curved fragments of rotted trunks aboard. He passed these out, and four men knelt to paddle. “Won’t be for long,” he said. “I think I can see weeds ahead, and we’ll find bottom again.”

“What’s that?” one of the sailors asked in a panicky voice, and Driscoll turned in time to see something dark dip beneath the water, not far away.

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