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Doc and his four companions are on a search for Margaret Pullman, the train heiress and aviatrix. Her attempt to circle the globe alone seems to have run amiss somewhere between the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean and her next scheduled port of call, the island of Java in Indonesia.
Accompanying Doc are:
While flying to Miss Pullman's last known stop in the Seychelles, Doc spots a tramp steamer with two fishing boats alongside just as Louie gets a truncated radio message saying the SS Minnetonka is being boarded by pirates. Yelling and gunfire can be heard in the background.
Doc calls for the Russian paratrooper maneuver and brings the plane over the steamer. The Fearless Four jump out. Gil and Tom land safely. Charles actually lands between two of the obvious pirates and disarms them by the simple expedient of kicking their weapons out of their hands as a part of his landing. Louie lands next to a pirate who is too busy watching the others to realize that someone has landed behind him.
Charles finds himself in a protracted struggle. One target goes down quickly, but the other spars with him for almost a minute, cutlass against baseball bat. At one point Charlie throws down his bat and scoops up the fallen pirate's cutlass to continue the fight.
Louie disposes of his initial opponent quickly, then jumps onto one of the pirate boats. This boat has an old Maxim machinegun that has just been used to spray the Goose. Fortunately, nothing vital was hit. Louie puts down two of the four pirates on the boat, while Gil, running out of clustered pirates to blow up en masse, takes out the machine gun, the machine gunner, the ammo handler who was trying to shoot at Louie, and the ammunition for the machnine gun with a carefully placed grenade. The ammo cooks off and Louie barely gets back on the steamer before the pirate vessel finishes blowing up.
Meanwhile, Tom has engaged one of the pirate lieutenants and, after a couple of missteps, manages to toss him well out to sea. At that point he comes under fire from the pirate captain, who is on the bridge of the steamer. Tom swarms up the decks to reach the captain.
Doc has brought the plane about and manages to use a wingtip to knock a couple of the pirates on the other pirate boat into the water. He then clambers out of the Goose and, after getting his sea legs, puts both of them down without taking any injury. He leaps on board the steamer as Gil jumps down to the pirate craft to scuttle it.
There's nothing for Doc to do on the steamer, most of the pirates have either been taken care of by his partners, or jumped by the crew when they were distracted. He takes the recently victorious Charles with him to check on the crew of the steamer. The last pirate active is the captain, who holds off both Louie and Tom for about a minute before being felled by a combination of shattering blows dealt by the two partners.
After dumping the pirates overboard, the adventurers talk to the steamer captain and his crew. They say that they know of Miss Pullman, and think she may have ventured into the Swirl, an area north and east of the Seychelles where there always seems to be a storm raging. Very few people have ventured into the Swirl and come out again, and their stories of what they saw are generally not believed.
Realizing this is the last chance to find Peg Pullman alive, Doc thanks the steamer crew and he and his men set off for the Swirl.