KING DONG
by
Edgar Rider Ragged
This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons or primates, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HarperNonFiction
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2005
Copyright © Edgar Rider Ragged 2005
Edgar Rider Ragged asserts the immoral right to remain unidentified.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with all contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007208128
Ebook Edition © Jul 2013 ISBN: 9780007524686
Version: 2017-01-18
And the Prophet said, And lo, the Beast looked upon the face of Beauty. And Beauty said unto the Beast, ‘You lookin’ at me, pal? Stitch that!’ And from that day, the Beast was as one dead.
Old Glaswegian proverb
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE Rumbuggery on the Lash
CHAPTER FOUR Bones of Contention
CHAPTER FIVE Tall Tales and a Big Whopper
CHAPTER SIX Welcome to Dongland
CHAPTER SEVEN By Hook and by Crook
CHAPTER EIGHT Virgin and the Ridiculous
CHAPTER NINE A Taste of Marzipan
CHAPTER ELEVEN Heeerrre’s Dongie!
CHAPTER TWELVE Beauty and the Beast?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN Gorilla Warfare
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Plots and Pans
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Sing Alonga Dong
CHAPTER NINETEEN So Long, Dong
CHAPTER ONE Rumbuggery on the Lash
In the bustling port of Old Hokum, an old tramp lay against the quay, filthy, neglected, rust-streaked and leaking from every seam.
The ship that loomed above him was in pretty poor shape, too.
Seeing the bobbing approach of a watchman’s lantern, the old tramp corked the brown bottle he had been holding to his cracked lips and croaked out a hail. ‘Say, friend, what ship is that?’
The watchman was bored, and disposed to be chatty. ‘The Vulture. Sailing tomorrow.’
The old tramp waved his bottle towards the ship. ‘They lookin’ for any hands?’
The watchman held up his lamp and gazed at the questioner’s impressive collection of liver spots and elephant’s scrotum wrinkles. ‘Now see here, old timer, you don’t want to be taken on to that crew, if half of what they say is true.’
The old tramp blinked his rum-reddened eyes and gave a hacking cough. ‘What do they say?’
‘Why, that the captain of this old rust-bucket has hired it to Carl Deadman, the motion picture producer who’s always going off to the most crazy dangerous places he can find to make movies about the world’s deadliest critters with scant regard for the lives or sanity of his men, and he’s setting off tomorrow for an unknown destination with a highly dangerous cargo and a crew of the worst collection of low-life wharf-rats and plug-ugly desperadoes anyone has ever seen, that’s what they say. Why d’you ask?’
‘Come to think of it, no idea.’ The old tramp