Refraction 001: The Man of Bronze

What is a Refraction in Bronze?

There was death afoot in the darkness…

The glints that caught my mind’s eye….

TaleType: Lost Civilization adventure; Doc and the Amazing Five seek his spectacular inheritance, but unscrupulous others have self-serving plans for the treasure.

Savage Roll Call: Clark ‘Doc’ Savage, Jr.; Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Blodgett ‘Monk’ Mayfair; Brigadier General Theodore Marley ‘Ham’ Brooks; Colonel John ‘Renny’ Renwick; William Harper ‘Johnny’ Littlejohn; Major Thomas J. ‘Long Tom’ Roberts

La femme du jour:

• Princess Monja: Daughter of King Chaac, ruler of a lost tribe of Mayans hidden in the trackless mountains of the Central American republic of Hidalgo
• Description: She was by a long stretch the most attractive of the Mayan girls they had seen. The perfection of her features revealed instantly that she was King Chaac’s daughter. She was nearly as tall as her father. The exquisite fineness of her beauty was like the work of some masterly craftsman in gold.
• Doc Savage is seriously tempted to fall for the Princess, so impressed is he with her beauty, intelligence, and courage, going so far as to compliment her with the romantic, Monja, you’ve been a brick. When she is confused by the American slang, Doc explains that he meant that he thought she was A wonderful girl.

Notable Nogoodniks (and their just deserts):

• The Son of the Feathered Serpent: Feathered-snake-god-impersonating non-Mayan instigator of the plot to wrest away Doc’s inheritance
• Description: … he wore a remarkable masquerade. The body of the garment consisted of an enormous snakeskin, the hide of a giant boa constrictor. The head of the reptile had been carefully skinned out, and probably enlarged by some stretching process until it formed a fantastic hood and mask for the one who wore it.

The man’s arms and legs, projecting from the masquerade garment, were painted a gaudy blue, the Mayan holy color. Starting on the forehead and down the middle of the back, and nearly to the dragging end of the snake tail, were feathers. They resembled the trains on the feather headdress of an American Indian.

• His deserved end: Jumps to his death from a cliff rather than face the terrible vengeance promised in Doc’s golden eyes

• Morning Breeze: Unattractive leader of the red-fingered Mayan warrior clan
• Description: … this man was more stocky than the others. Indeed, he had Monk’s anthropoid build without Monk’s gigantic size. His face was dark and evil.
• His bad end: Plummets to his death on jagged rocks when he is pushed by the Son of the Feathered Serpent as they try to elude a vengeful Doc Savage

The Other Guys: Birds who have important roles in the story

• President Avispa: Honorable elected leader of the small nation of Hidalgo; Clark Savage, Sr. had saved his life with his medical skills twenty years before the events of The Man of Bronze
• Description: … a powerful man, a few inches shorter than Doc. His upstanding shock of white hair lent him a distinguished aspect. His face was lined with care, but intelligent and pleasant. He was near fifty.

• King Chaac: Leader of the lost Mayan tribe, and trustee of Doc Savage’s inheritance

• Description: He was a tall, solid man, only a little stooped with age. His hair was a snowy white, and his features were nearly as perfect as Doc’s own! Dressed in an evening suit, Chaac would have been a distinct credit to any banquet table in New York. He wore a maxtli, or broad girdle, of red, with the ends forming an apron in front and back.

The Nefarious Plot: to use modern weaponry and ‘The Red Death’ plague germ to extort gold from the inhabitants of the Valley of the Vanished, and use the funds to finance a revolution in the tiny Central American republic of Hidalgo:

• … to overthrow President Avispa’s honest, low-cost government, so they could loot the public treasury, tax the citizens to bankruptcy for a year or two, then skip to Paris and the fleshpots of Europe for a life of luxury on the proceeds.

Infernal Devices:

• The Red Death germ plague
• Hidden microphone in Doc’s office
• Elephant gun to shoot at Doc through the brick & mortar wall of his skyscraper headquarters
• Altimeter-triggered bomb rigged to destroy Doc’s plane when it reached a certain altitude

Doc’s (and others’) Devices

• Invisible-writing chalk, used to leave messages that fluoresce under UV light (invented by Clark Savage, Sr.!)
• Spring-powered flashlight
• Autogyro
• Radio-controlled plane
• ‘Automatic pistols’ that were ‘continuously automatic’ and ‘infinitely more compact than ordinary submachine guns;’ these unique firearms are used to sling lead in this pre-mercy-bullet adventure
• Improvised gold vase gunpowder bombs
• Monk’s temporary paralysis gas
• Long Tom’s ‘health-ray’ for treating the deleterious effects of the Red Death

Doc Savage is Super, Man! From the very first story, the Man of Bronze foreshadows that other metallic fellow. From Chapter XVII:

• ‘Doc walked through the crowd untouched! Not a warrior dared lay a hand upon him, such a hypnotic quality did his golden eyes contain. No doubt his reputation of a superman in a fight helped.’

Savage Superlatives: This is our introduction to Doc Savage, and in the first several stories Lester Dent made sure to feature a multitude of the quintessential qualities that made the Man of Bronze the absolute acme in human development, and the world’s supreme adventurer.

These qualities roughly fall into five categories: Physical Strength & Agility; Encyclopedic Knowledge on every subject known to humanity; Acquired Skills in an astonishing variety of disciplines; Super-Senses beyond the human norm; and Invaluable Connections to organizations and people in positions of authority around the globe. Here is just a sampling from The Man of Bronze:

Extraordinary Strength:

• Doc pulls a high-caliber bullet out of where it is lodged in the back of a steel safe – with just the strength of his fingers
• He snaps stout ropes with his fingers
• He tears a doorknob out of a door
• He stuns a man-eating shark with one blow (not Doc’s only encounter with a shark in the series!)

Genius-Level Knowledge:

• Doc identifies the nearly extinct language of Mayan, and is able to communicate – haltingly – in the language within minutes: ‘He recognized the lingo—it was one of the myriad of vernaculars in his great magazine of knowledge.’
• With limited lab equipment and using the local flora, Doc is able to concoct a cure for the virulent Red Death that had baffled medical experts in New York

Astounding Acquired Skills:

• Silent Stealth: He had seen great jungle cats slide through dense leafage in that strangely noiseless fashion, and had copied it himself. He made absolutely no sound.
• Breath Control: Doc Savage, thanks to years of practice, could hold his breath fully twice as long as the most expert pearl diver.
• Expert Aviator: The landing Doc made was feather-light, a sample of his wizardry with the controls
• Expert Diver, Speedy Swimmer: demonstrated when Doc rescues a thug from a shark attack off the coast of Belize

Superior Senses:

• Hearing: ‘So powerful and sensitive had his hearing become that he could detect sounds absolutely inaudible to other people.’
• Touch: ‘He read a page of Braille printing—the writing for the blind which is a system of upraised dots—so rapidly his fingers merely seemed to stroke the sheet. This was to attune his sense of touch.’
• Estimating weight: Doc guessed ‘…the weight of that bullet within a few grains, almost as accurately as a chemist’s scale could weigh it.’

Invaluable Connections: A New York City cop doesn’t stop Doc’s speeding taxi when he sees the bronze man on the running board because he ‘… must have been one who knew and revered the elder Savage.’

The Amazing Five: We make our acquaintance with this extraordinary quintet, their fast friendships forged in the furnace of the Great War, with these initial descriptions:

Monk – Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Blodgett Mayfair:

• A few inches over five feet, anthropoid-looking Monk weighs in at over 260 pounds
• His chest is thicker than it is wide,
• He’s the only one of Doc’s aides with scars, because he … gloried in his tough looks, even though he carries a pocket mirror!
• His fists? Monk popped the knuckles in hands that were near as big as gallon pails. In later stories this gargantuan fist-size is usually reserved for Renny Renwick.
• His low forehead apparently didn’t contain room for a spoonful of brains. Actually, Monk was in a way of being the most widely known chemist in America. He was a Houdini of the test tubes.

Ham – Brigadier General Theodore Marley Brooks:

• Slender, waspy, quick-moving
• Possessing a plain black cane which … was, among other things, a sword cane
Among other things?
• He has prematurely gray hair
• …possibly the most astute lawyer Harvard ever turned out

Renny – Colonel John Renwick:

• In this first story, Renny, at six feet four inches and 250 pounds, is taller and larger than Doc Savage
• He’s Big, with sloping mountains of gristle for shoulders, and long kegs of bone and tendon for arms…
• His features had a most puritanical look.
• His voice is like … thunder gobbling out of a cave
• Renny takes his gallon-sized mitts back from Monk in the ensuing month’s story
• He is an expert marksman and machine gunner
• … known throughout the world for his engineering accomplishments…

Johnny – William Harper Littlejohn:

• Very tall and gaunt
• He looked like a half-starved, studious scientist.
• Wore glasses with a peculiarly thick lens over the left eye, which was ‘virtually useless’ due to an injury incurred in the Great War
• Johnny … exceeded all the others, excepting Doc, in endurance.
• He was probably one of the greatest living experts on geology and archaeology.

Long Tom – Major Thomas J. Roberts:

• ‘…an undersized, slender man came in …’
• None-too-healthy complexion
• Blond, Nordic pale hair; his eyes a faded blue
• He looks like a physical weakling… but his looks are deceiving
• Ears ‘…too big, thin & pale’
• Enormous gold front tooth (just one here, but in some of the stories he has two aureate choppers)
• Very ropy, powerful muscles
• ‘He could probably whip ninety-nine out of every hundred men you meet on the street, and not shown fatigue in doing it.’
• Subject to ‘… periodic rages, wild tantrums of temper…’
• ‘He was a wizard with electricity.’

The Elder Savage: The story opens with Clark Savage, Senior, Doc’s father having died just three weeks before Doc’s return to New York City. As the story is largely about Savage, Sr.’s legacy to his son, we learn more about him in this tale than in any other Doc Savage story:

• Doc’s mission was passed on to him from his father: ‘… the ideals of my father – to go here and there, from one end of the world to the other, looking for excitement & adventure, striving to help those who need help, and punishing those who deserve it.’
• He was ‘… known throughout the world for his dominant bearing and his good work.’
• ‘Early in life, he had amassed a tremendous fortune,’ but ‘his fortune had dwindled to practically nothing. But as it shrank, his influence had increased’
• He had ‘… fine, almost engraving-perfect writing’
• Doc’s library? It was ‘… his father’s great technical library.’
• “My father was never mixed up in piker deals. I have heard him treat a million-dollar transaction as casually as though he were buying a cigar.”
• According to the President of Hidalgo, Savage, Sr. was a man of medicine: “Your father saved my life with his wonderful medical skill. That was twenty years ago.”
• ‘Wherever Savage, Sr., had gone, he had made friends among all people who were worthy of friendship.’

Size Matters: In the descriptions of Doc and friends, it is clear that Renny is the bigger man:

• Doc: ‘An onlooker would have doubted his six feet height—and would have been astounded to learn he weighed every ounce of two hundred pounds.’

• Renny: ‘… a giant who towered four inches over six feet. He weighed fully two fifty.’

• And yet: ‘Doc got off the table and stood beside the giant Renny. It was only then that one realized what a big man Doc was. Alongside Renny, Doc was like dynamite alongside gunpowder.’

Vocabulary of Bronze:

• Nigrescent: black-ish

• ‘To run a whizzer’ on someone: to scam or fool them

• Dornicks: small boulders

• Henequin rope: (generally spelled ‘henequen’) a plant native to Yucatán, Mexico, processed as a textile for use, as binder twine

• Hoick: lift or pull abruptly or with effort

The Body Count: In the early adventures, Doc and his crew had not yet adopted their ‘no killing’ policy, and Doc’s super-firers slung more lead than mercy. In this tale of vengeance, at least eleven bad guys get theirs at the hands (and eyes) of our heroes:

Doc: Accounts for at least six:

• Kills a Mayan assassin with a neck chop

• Does away with three thugs in a dark melee in Blanco Grande

• Punches a machine-gunner to death

• The Son of the Feathered Serpent throws himself off a cliff to escape the vengeance he found in Doc’s eyes: Doc did not move. But his inexorable golden eyes seemed to project themselves toward his quarry. They were merciless. They chilled. They shriveled. They promised awful things.

Monk: The most bloodthirsty of Doc’s aides throughout the series tallies up at least one in this first tale, and in a most fearsome manner:

• Throws a Mayan attacker into a tree: ‘He heaved the loathsome creature up like a feather and dashed him against a tree. The lifeless body bounced back almost to his feet, so terrific was the impact.’

Ham: At least four, although it’s possible that Ham’s ‘skewered’ assailants were not receiving fatal stabs:

• ‘He expertly skewered a fellow who tried to stab him.’

• ‘Ham with his sword in another unlucky one, was overcome an instant later.’

• ‘No gallant of old ever bared his steel quicker than Ham unsheathed his sword cane. He got it out in time to skewer two of the devils who piled atop him!’

Renny: At least one:

• Machine-gunned the pilot of the blue plane

Long Tom: At least one:

• ‘One of Long Tom’s clawlike hands found a rock. He popped it against a skull—knew by the feel of the blow that one of the red-fingered fiends was through with this world.’

Johnny: Goose egg!

• Not a single life is mentioned as having been taken by Professor Littlejohn

That Savage Humor: the early Doc wasn’t above delivering a joke or two, or even a bit of sardonic humor:

• “Next time, Doc, suppose we have bulletproof glass in these windows!” Renny suggested, the humor in his voice belying his dour look.

“Sure,” said Doc. “Next time! We’re on the eighty-sixth floor, and it’s quite common to be shot at here!”

• “Get me the firearms manufacturing firm of Webley & Scott, Birmingham, England,” he told the phone operator. “Yes, of course—England! Where the Prince of Wales lives.”

• “Monk, you’d better accompany Ham as bodyguard,” Doc suggested. “You two love each other so!”

End Quote:

“Now you listen,” Monk said seriously. “There won’t be any women in Doc’s life. If there was, you’d be the one. Doc has come nearer falling for you than for any other girl. And some pippins have tried to snare Doc.”