Story of the Phantom by Lee Falk Read Free Book Online Page A

gods.

    "How?" Kit wanted to know.

    "They cut out their hearts with a black stone knife," his father replied.

    "Really, dear," said beautiful mother who was passing in the corridor, "is that a nice thing to tell the boy?"

    "When he asks a question, he must have an answer," replied the father in the flat tone he used to end a discussion. The mother sighed, shook her head, and started off. The father smiled.

    "You should have married that banker and lived in a nice white house with a picket fence, like your mother wanted you to," he said.

    She laughed, threw him a kiss and went on her way. Kit waited impatiently until she was out of sight.

    "Cut Out their hearts with a black stone knife!" he shouted. "Did it hurt?"

    "No, I think not. As I recall, the victims were unconscious. That is, the Aztecs put them to sleep."

    "How?"

    "They bent them over a stone and broke their backs," said father. Mother heard this on her way back to another room. She shook her head and sighed again, but did not argue this time.

    "Later," continued the father, "the cabin boy and his Indian friend named Caribo found a flat-topped peak in the desert, called a mesa. On top of this, they made a home they called the "Acne," which is an eagle's nest. That was in"-he glanced at the book-"1497. We still have an Aerie, and someday you will visit it."

    He went on with the tale. The cabin boy returned to the Old World and grew up to be a great sea captain. Years later, he went on his last voyage. With him was his grown son, whose name was Kit.
    The ship was attacked by Singg pirates in the bay of Bangalla. The father and all the crew were killed, except Kit, who escaped to shore, wounded, where he was found by the pygmies and nursed back to health.

    "His name was Kit too?" Kit asked. His father nodded.

    18

    "So is mine," he said. Kit was amazed. It had never occurred to him that his father had a name, other than "dear," which his mother used.

    "That Kit was the first Phantom who swore the oath on the skull of his father's murderer!" said Kit, excited now that mysteries were being explained. "But how did he know the murderer?"

    "The dead pirate was washed up on the beach, not long after the raid, probably killed in a brawl. Kit had seen him stab his father. And the dead pirate was wearing his father's clothes."

    Days passed in the chamber of Chronicles. While Guran and his other pygmy friends waited vainly outside the Cave, Kit sat fascinated with the tales of his ancestors. Every free moment his father had was spent there. Kit would pounce upon him as soon as he was awake, drag him away from the table after meals, and sit up until bedtime, asking for more tales. The tales were endless, for four hundred years and twenty generations of Phantoms' experience were on those shelves, and each Phantom had lived a full, adventure-packed life.

    NATALA

    The tale of a seventeenth century ancestor thrilled Kit. This Phantom went to rescue a reigning queen named Natala, who had been kidnapped for ransom by the notorious pirate, Redbeard. Redbeard ruled an entire pirate fleet and a pirate city. He was a giant, a master swordsman and a powerful fighter who could kill men with his bare hands as easily as with weapons. He had fought his way to leadership of the toughest and wildest gang of pirates on the earth at that time. Redbeard tamed them all, forced discipline in his town and on his fleets, and became the scourge of the seven seas. So efficient and deadly were his pirate crews that the royal fleets of the great powers avoided battle with them.

    Natala, the Queen of France-called the world's most beautiful woman-was on her way to Spain for a royal wedding with the king there, when Redbeard's pirates took her small fleet by surprise and attacked her. The pirates took all of the treasures Natala had brought as her dowry, looted the supplies, and dumped all the surviving crews on a remote shore. Redbeard took all the pretty young women as wives for his men, all