Swiftly, the Phantom moved through the jungle on foot, silently blending with the gathering darkness.
Soon he reached another clearing. In the center of it was an old, stone well. A large sign affixed to the poles of the well roof announced in several languages: POISON WATER!
After a quick glance around, the masked man leaped over the stone wall of the well. He dropped six feet down the dark hole.
Instead of hitting water, he landed on a smooth, stone floor. He pressed a certain point on a stone and a hidden door swung silently inward. A tunnel, high enough for a man to walk upright branched off the well at this point.
Taking a small flashlight from his belt, the Phantom entered the tunnel. It was long and straight, traveling nearly a mile underground. At its end, the masked man climbed up a metal ladder attached to the stone wall.
In the ceiling above the ladder was a small trap door. He slid it open, thrust a note through the opening.
Then the Phantom climbed back down the ladder and jogged silently back along the tunnel.
Moments later, he emerged out of the abandoned well. And soon after that he was riding away into the night, returning to the Deep Woods.
Meanwhile, in a certain office of the Jungle Patrol headquarters, a small, red light was now flashing.
CHAPTER 7
Cautiously leaving his desk, Sgt. Barnum of the Jungle Patrol attempted to tiptoe closer to the partially-open door across the room. He was a squat, sunburned man. His heavy boots and ample weight defeated his attempt at unobstrusive eavesdropping.
“You may as well come in, Sergeant,” said a voice from the inner office. “This may concern all of us.”
“Excuse me, sir,” said Barnum as he crossed the threshold of the office of the Jungle Patrol’s Commanding Officer.
Colonel Weeks was a large, grey-haired man. Right now he was kneeling in front of a safe. On the wall above the square, black box a small, red lightbulb was mounted. It was blinking now.
Shuffling closer, the Sergeant said, “I happened to be glancing this way and I saw the light flashing. So I figured it was . .
“What it always is,” said Colonel Weeks as he worked the combination of the safe. “A message from the real Commander of the Jungle Patrol.” When he pulled the safe door open, the light ceased to blink.
“You know, I’ve been speculating as to the actual identity of our mysterious Commander, sir. I’ve come to the conclusion ...”
“I hope that’s the conclusion,” said the Colonel. “Because we’ve got a job to get going on.”
“What does he say this time?”
The Colonel handed Barnum the Phantom’s message and returned to his desk to pick up his pipe.
Sgt. Barnum read the note aloud. “ ‘Colonel Weeks: You are to take immediate steps to capture the bandits who operate out of the Great Swamp and call themselves the Swamp Rats. Commander, Jungle Patrol.’ ” The squat Sergeant nodded his head up and down. “Well, that’s terse and to the point.”
After refilling his pipe from his tobacco pouch, the Colonel walked to the large map on the wall of his office. He lit the pipe with a wooden match, puffed on it and gestured at the map with the burnt-out match stick. “There it is, right on the edge of the jungle, the Great Swamp. A devil of a place, from all I’ve heard.” “Haunted, too, so they say.” Bamum joined his superior officer in front of the big map. “Full of ghostly lights and things like that.”
“Corporal Mchanga grew up in the Tiger Lake area, didn’t he? Quite close to the Great Swamp.”
“That’s right, sir. Til ask him about the ghosts and the..
“That’s not exactly what I had in mind, Sergeant.” Colonel Weeks moved back behind his desk. “Tomorrow you and Mchanga will go to the Great Swamp. Explore the place, see if you can find out anything about where these so-called Swamp Rats are holed up.”
“With both Mchanga and me working on it, sir, we’ll be sure to track them down.”
“Don’t take any unnecessary risks,” cautioned the Colonel. “Once you get a fix on their hideout, report hack here to JP headquarters. We’ll send in enough men to smoke out the entire gang.”
“I sure think Mchanga and me can handle it ourselves, sir,” said Barnum. “I mean to say, there cant be more than a couple dozen of these bandits, can there? So that makes the odds about 12 to 1, which Is not...”
“Nevertheless, you’re to consider yourself a scouting party,” Colonel Weeks told him. “You bring back information, not prisoners.”
Sgt. Barnum shifted from one foot to the other. “Very well, sir.”
“Better go now and tell Corporal Mchanga to be ready to depart first thing tomorrow morning.” Barnum put the Phantom’s message on the Colonel’s desk, saluted, about-faced and marched from the office.
Colonel Weeks puffed on his pipe, one hand resting on the note. “Almost thirty years with the patrol,” he mused, “and still I’ve never seen him.”
The Jungle Patrol was the chief peace-keeping body in the wilds of Bangalla. It was an elite corps. Out of the thousands of men who applied each year, men of all races and all nations, only a few were accepted, after undergoing the most rigorous of tests. And no member of the patrol knew the identity of the mysterious Commander. Not even Colonel Weeks knew, though perhaps he suspected, that their orders came directly from the Phantom.
CHAPTER 8
He could tell time now only in the simplest terms. Light meant day, dark meant night. Ted Sills believed he’d only been wandering in the Great Swamp for about a day and a half. But he was no longer sure. He knew, as the patches of sky up through the trees began to fade from light to dark, he was hungry again. Hungry and thirsty.
The first night, the first dark period, it hadn’t been so bad because he’d had the dried beef he’d taken. That was all gone now. The next morning, the next light period, he’d stumbled on a stream where the water appeared to be fresh. He stayed in the brush, a short distance from the stream, and watched it for awhile. Eventually, birds fluttered down to drink, then, a bit later, three small lemmings. So, deciding the water was safe, Ted drank from the stream.
The trouble was he didn’t have anything to put water in, no container or canteen, and he hadn’t found another source of water since. Maybe he should have just camped by the stream, but he felt, remembering his bloody hands, that he had to keep moving. He came across pools of water, but these were all foulsmelling, scummy.
Now, as a new, dark period commenced, he was crouched on a marshy patch of ground. He’d eaten all his food. He was hungry and incredibly thirsty.
And warm. He wasn’t certain if it was the thick, murky air of the swamp which was making him sweat and feel as though his skin were glowing. Maybe he had some kind of fever which was burning him up from inside.
Another humming mosquito lit on his face. Ted didn’t bother to brush it off. The insects had been at him ever since he’d taken his first steps into the Great Swamp.
“Never mind,” he said to himself. “It’s a lot better than being in jail. I don’t want that.”
He thought often of the shopkeeper. Last night, was it really last night? Yes, it was. He even thought he saw the fat, black man off in the swamp, partially-hidden by gnarled branches and hanging moss and vines. The shopkeeper glowed faintly, blood was spurting out of deep wounds all over his body.
“It was a dream,” Ted told himself now.
He hadn’t really slept much. He was afraid that, somehow, if he gave himself completely over to sleep, the swamp would take him, swallow him up, somehow. He heard things out there in the new blackness. Animals watching, stalking him. He had no weapons.
“Never mind,” he said aloud, again. “It’s better than going to jail.”
He wasn’t quite sure. He had the feeling which was growing stronger, he might not get out of the Great Swamp alive. He didn’t know much about Bangalla, beyond some quick research in the public library back home, but he remembered hearing about this swamp before.
Ted rubbed at the place where the last mosquito had bitten him.
“It’s better than jail,” he told himself once more.
A single, spikey leaf fluttered down to land near his foot. Ted glanced up.
A giant snake, five feet long and striped yellow and brown, was creeping down a long, twisted branch of a dry tree.
Ted could see it with great clarity—its rough, scaly body, its tongue fluttering out between its fangs.
Keeping his eyes on it, Ted began to back away. In a crouching position, he felt out behind himself with one hand.
The snake was watching him, too. It glided along the branches, keeping him always within striking distance.
Ted’s hand hadn’t warned him. His next backward step didn’t touch solid ground. Instead his foot began to sink down, pulled by a powerful suction.
“Quicksand,” he cried out.
Then two things happened.
A pistol cracked and the big snake’s head disintegrated into bloody fragments.
A rough hand grabbed Ted by the arm and yanked him free of the quicksand.
“Thanks,” Ted mumbled.
“You’re not out of the woods yet, sonny boy.”
CHAPTER 9
The Jungle Patrol jeep came bouncing through the steamy, yellow morning. Sgt. Barnum was in the passenger seat, maps and memos spread out on his broad lap. Corp. Mchanga, a lanky young, black man, was at the wheel.
“Tiger Lake,” said the Corporal.
“Yeah, I just found it on my map.”
“We’re passing it, on the left.”
Barnum sat up, turning his sunburned face toward the large lake. Fluffy-tipped reeds grew all around the shore, along with a few low, twisted trees. As the Sergeant squinted, five large pink water birds came swooping low over the water. The lake was the same color as the day, a muddy yellow. “Back where I come from,” he said, “you can drive a whole day, sunup to sunset, and never see as much as a teacup full of water.”
“Tiger Lake is far from being the most beautiful spot in Bangalla. The water is brackish.”
“You grew up around here, huh?”
The Corporal took one hand off the wheel to point. “Just below those mountains over there. They call them the Blue Mountains.”
“Don’t look very blue.”
“And there are no tigers hereabouts, either. People put many odd names on things.”
“You’ve been in the Great Swamp?” Barnum was tracing a stubby finger over the topmost map.
“Its fringes,” Mchanga replied. “My people never liked the place. But when I was a boy, some of the more daring of us would sneak down to explore a little.”
“Did you ever run into anything,” asked Bamum, “that was supernatural? I keep hearing stories, you know, that there are ghosts and the like in the swamp.”
The Corporal laughed. “Unfortunately, no. We boys hoped and hoped for even so much as an unearthly light, but no such luck.”
“I think we’re coming near the spot where that truck got hijacked the other night.”
Mchanga slowed the jeep. “We never even got a glimpse of Diamond Jack,” he said, still remembering his youth. “So finally, like many boys before us, we ceased to visit the Great Swamp and became interested in other things. Quite soon after that, we turned into men.”
Sgt. Bamum was learing out, squinting at the roadway ahead, then frowning at the map. “Yeah, right ahead, there by that big dead tree, I think.”
The Corporal pulled the jeep off the road, killed the engine and hopped to the ground. A hot, muddy smell was drifting out of the swamp. “Yes, this is the Great Swamp all right,” he said as he sniffed the air.
“Now, if those Swamp Rat guys popped up here, they must have a way of getting from here back to their hideout.” He’d bundled all his maps and notes up under his arm and was standing on the borderland of the swamp. “So all we have to do it follow their trail and we’ll find them.”
“It sounds quite simple,” grinned Mchanga. “I wonder why no one else has thought of that.”
“Okay, tracking them won’t be so easy, but...”
The Corporal knelt on one knee, scanning the marshy ground. “Here is a beginning anyway. A footprint going into the swamp.”
“Could be one of the local policemen.”
“No, this was made by a man wearing some kind of sandal.” Rising, he pulled aside the reeds and ferns and took several careful steps forward. “Yes, and there is another footprint.”
Sgt. Barnum followed, making sure he stepped exactly where the corporal did. “You’d think the locals would have noticed the prints.”
“Perhaps they did, but were reluctant to follow.” He located several more footprints. Soon the two of them were completely surrounded by the trees and brush of the Great Swamp. “This fellow’s obviously carrying something heavy.”
“A couple of cases of stolen whiskey maybe.”
The heavy footprints led them on, deeper into the swamp. The light became murkier, the air hotter. The tree branches tangled and twisted together, the moss and bright fungus were thick.
Up ahead, a fallen log stretched across a patch of pale, green earth. Stopping a few feet short of the log, Mchanga dropped to one knee again, studying the ground. “Yes, he went over the log.”
Barnum lifted off his tan sunhelmet to rub at his hair. “Funny how we’ve only come across traces of one of these birds so far.”
“It may be they separate after each raid, taking different routes back to their hideout.” He straightened, stepped onto the log.
When he was half-way across, Bamum climbed on.
While both of them were still walking the log, there came a cracking, splintering sound. The log and the ground gave way beneath them.
“A trap,” said Mchanga as they fell down into darkness.
CHAPTER 10
Barnum couldn’t figure out what the odd jogging motion was. Opening his eyes, he discovered he was being carried over someone’s shoulder. When he decided to do something to put a stop to that, he found his hands and feet were tied together with vines. The sergeant realized he’d lost some time. How much he wasn’t sure. Judging from his awkward point of view, it was still morning. What about Mchanga? Bamum twisted, trying to see if the corporal was being carried by someone, too.
“Awake are you, my lad?” The large, blond Glaze asked him. “That’s nice. You can have yourself lots of fun enjoying the scenery.”
“Where’s my partner?”
“One . of my partners is toting him,” answered the Swamp Rat. “He got a little more banged up in his nosedive than you did.”
“He’s hurt?”
“Nothing serious,” replied Glaze. “Had he been in really lousy shape, we’d have left him in the pit. We don’t need no dead weight out here.”
“Or anyone making a mistake,” said the sergeant as he was bounced along through the swamp. “We’re Jungle Patrol, you know. You do anything to us and the whole outfit’ll...”
Glaze laughed with both his mouth and nose. “Not very likely, my lad,” he said. “We’ve got a lot more little surprises set up than the one that bagged you. Even if you hadn’t fallen into it, you wouldn’t have gotten very far. The Great Swamp takes care of its enemies pretty quickly.”
“When two dozen JP men come pouring in here ...” “We’ll fix them all good and proper,” chuckled Glaze. “Nobody’s going to sneak up on the Swamp Rats, my lad.”
Sgt. Bamum decided to stop talking for awhile.
After another half-hour of being carried through the dense swamp, he was dumped on a patch of mossy ground. A many-legged insect began to explore his face. There was nothing he could do about it.
“Set that one down easy, Turk,” said Glaze. “We don’t want him to get more battered than he already is.”
“Still out like a light.” Turk was a tall, bald man. Most of his left ear was missing.
Squatting next to the sprawled Bamum, Glaze drew out a bright, new, hunting knife. “Don’t worry, my lad, I’m not going to carve you up, not right yet.” Laughing, he cut through the vines which held the sergeant.
Sgt. Bamum sat up, rubbed at his wrists and glanced about. Corp. Mchanga was lying a few feet away, unconscious. One side of his face was bloody. Bamum started to crawl to him.
“Hold on, my lad. Stay put, if you please.”
“I want to see how he is.”
“He’s okay, don’t you worry none.” Glaze went over tq,cut away the vines binding the black corporal. “He’ll be doing his share of chores in next to no time. Leastways, he better.”
A few yards away was a large stretch of seemingly solid ground. Several, simple, wooden huts had been built there; small, one-room huts. A larger house was in the process of being built. From behind one of the small huts, a column of white smoke was drifting up. Out of that hut came Kling, the small, old man. “What you got, Glaze?” he called.
“Come and feast your eyes on our new, hired hands,” invited Glaze.
On the ground Mchanga groaned.
The pygmy Guran looked up as the Phantom came walking out of the Skull Cave late the next afternoon. He had been sitting in the shade beside the entrance, his poison spear resting beside him. “Something worries you, Phantom,” he observed.
“Yes, Guran,” replied the masked man. “I’ve been listening to a news report.”
“You did not hear good news?”
“Colonel Weeks sent two men into the Great Swamp yesterday,” said the Phantom. “As of noon today they’ve failed to report in.”
“Ah, the swamp has taken them for its own.”
“It’s also possible, old friend, that the Swamp Rats have done something to them.”
“Who are the two?”
“Sgt. Barnum and Corporal Mchanga, both good men.”' The Phantom, hands locked behind his back, paced on the grassy ground. “I think I’ve made a mistake.”
“That seldom occurs, Phantom.”
The masked man continued, “I shouldn’t have ordered the Colonel to send those men in there.” “The Great Swamp is an evil place, very dan gerous,” said Guran, his eyes on the Phantom. “All should stay away from such a place.”
Lee Falk - [Story of the Phantom 11] Page 3