Many of the crew were paralyzed by the hypnotic strobe light, and the attacking ship overcame the yacht. Juliet, who managed to avoid the paralysis ray, pushed Adam Tempus overboard and dove in behind him. As they floundered in the water, a third ship appeared on the horizon, The Jade Nile, and its stalwart captain, Mr. Darvy, dove into the water and rescued Juliet and Adam with astounding celerity.
The Grey Sisters boarded the yacht, and Sir Heathcliffe, who had been pretending to be paralyzed, accosted Magnolia at the first opportunity as Max fought off the pirating Japanese troops. As the raiders looted the craft and pulled it alongside their own, Cara established telepathic contact with one of the soldiers. Sir Heathcliffe and Danny drew their big guns and fired on the hijackers, rendering Cara unconscious when Danny's bullet found its mark on the soldier Cara was telepathically contacting.
Despite their valiant efforts to resist capture, the yacht was towed into the pirates' hideout in a cave on the rocky shore of a nearby island. Juliet, Adam and Mr. Darvy followed the boats into the hideout as well, and Heathcliffe and Cara slipped off the yacht into a large tarpaulin tent containing high-tech machine pistols.
Notorious Tong gangster Fat Man Wu made his appearance, and revealed that he and the Grey Sisters, working at the behest of the Germans, were arranging to provide the Japanese army with the newest line of automatic weaponry, compliments of the Grey Munitions Company, to help the Japanese mount an invasion of the eastern Asian continent. In return, the Japanese would deliver Jimmy Sung, and all of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Kowloon, to Fat Man Wu. Wu and his confederates, however, did not count on the Empire Club and the crew of The Jade Nile to invade their secret sanctuary. As Sir Heathcliffe detonated the munitions in the tarpaulin tent to eliminate the stockpile of automatic weapons, Cara and Adam, along with Sir Heathcliffe's hunting rival Hollingsly-Smythe, fought off the Japanese soldiers. Meanwhile, Max, Danny and Juliet sent Fat Man Wu to a watery grave in a shark tank meant for Jimmy Sung. With the timely arrival of the Chinese Military Police and their high-kicking commanding officer, Mr. Darvy and the crew of The Jade Nile transported the heroes to the relative safety of the open sea in the nick of time as the cave collapsed behind them.
Returning to the Hong Kong Empire Club, Lord Merryweather learned that Hollingsly-Smythe managed to escape the cave with one of the Grey automatic pistols. He determined to follow Hollingsly-Smythe on safari to Malaysia to ensure that the sinister weapon of destruction did not fall back into the wrong hands. The heroes made their way to Shanghai, where they said farewell to Sir Heathcliffe for the time being, and visited Jimmy Sung's village, where, much to the chagrin of Danny Mak, Jimmy expressed his gratitude to Max for saving his life by promising Max half of his underworld empire . . .
Episode Seventeen: The Cat's Meow
When Sir Heathcliffe's unscrupulous hunting rival, Reginald Hollingsly-Smythe, set off for the deepest jungles of Malaysia to hunt the White Tiger, the very same fabled beast of legend that mutilated Simeon Schrek in Africa years before, Sir Heathcliffe set off after him. Sir Heathcliffe feared that Hollingsly-Smythe would deliver into the wrong hands the Grey Munitions high-tech automatic pistol he salvaged from the Japanese army's munitions stockpile, formerly hidden in the now-decimated island cave of Fat Man Wu. With a crack team of hunters and a Sherpa named Suleiman, Lord Merryweather set off with Frederick's Bull Rifle to recover the Grey prototype pistol - and maybe down a White Tiger in the process.
Mysterious tiger tracks led Lord Merryweather and his band to a forest clearing where they encountered Hollingsly-Smythe, who determined he would test his new weapon on a prey even more difficult to slay than the White Tiger - Sir Heathcliffe himself! In a "sporting" fashion, Hollingsly-Smythe gave Lord Merryweather and his band twelve hours to run, after which he would find and destroy them. Taking to the mountains, Sir Heathcliffe and his band came upon a lake guarded by the White Tiger! After a deadly confrontation with the beast at the waterside, Sir Heathcliffe and the few surviving members of his band discovered a subterranean cavern beneath the lake which led to precipice overlooking a vast, bottomless pit. The band crawled along a narrow ridge on the perimeter of the pit, and one of the last two of Sir Heathcliffe's companions lost his footing, disappearing into the silent abyss below them.
Sir Heathcliffe edged his way to a narrow ledge upon which was seated the skeletal remains of an ancient Malaysian chieftain of some prehistoric White Tiger cult, still donning his royal raiments. Instantly, the skeleton arose from its throne and attacked Sir Heathcliffe with its spear, nearly knocking the old hunter into the abyss, had it not been for some overhanging vines to which Sir Heathcliffe clung for dear life. Sir Heathcliffe's last remaining guide, Suleiman, distracted the zombie chief with a well-placed gunshot just enough to enable the Great White Hunter to throw the monster over the cliff face into the chasm below. As the pair made their way back to the outside world, they were confronted by Hollingsly-Smythe, who mortally wounded Sir Heathcliffe's companion with one burst from his automatic pistol. A struggle ensued over the gun as Sir Heathcliffe took to fisticuffs in a futile attempt to disarm his ignominious rival. As Hollingsly-Smythe took aim at Lord Merryweather to deliver the coup-de-grāce, the ghostly blur of the pouncing White Tiger tore Hollingsly-Smythe in half, and the deadly pistol fell into oblivion over the mountainside. Mercifully - or, perhaps, sated by his kill for the day - the White Tiger disappeared with a snarl, leaving Sir Heathcliffe and the injured Suleiman to find their way back to civilization on their own . . .
Episode Eighteen: The Ten-Millennium Man
When they returned to civilization, Cara, Adam and Juliet encountered a man who was hunted by Japanese assassins, and who beseeched the trio to help him find some strange weapon similar to the technology employed by the Grey family in stockpiling their extraordinary arsenal. This man, known only as Dr. Xan, claimed to know from where the Grey sisters were obtaining the designs for their weird high-tech weapons, and the heroes reluctantly agreed to help him in order to thwart the plans of the Grey sisters.
Dr. Xan revealed that he was born on the perished continent of Atlantis, where a prehistoric society of high-tech achievement was lost when a mysterious volcanic eruption consumed the continent and destroyed nearly all of its inhabitants ten thousand years ago. Xan, however, had escaped annihilation by preserving himself in stasis. Following a tracking device Dr. Xan constructed using his native technology, the heroes traveled on Mr. Darvy's boat, The Jade Nile, to a tiny island nestled deep within the Japanese protectorate, where the heroes would find the fiend who had stolen the ancient technology and who had delivered it into the hands of the Grey family.
Upon arriving off the shore of the island, the heroes discovered that the inlet was too narrow to accommodate the large ship, and Mr. Darvy and his trusted first mate, Paco DelArroyo, rowed the heroes through the inlet on lifeboats. Still obstructing their passage was a violent whirlpool at the end of the inlet which made rowing impossible. Mr. Darvy dove into the whirlpool and, using his prodigious swimming abilities, discovered that an underwater generator was creating the whirlpool. Shutting it off, the crew grounded their boats on the shore where scores of spear-wielding aborigines surrounded them.
The heroes drew their weapons to fend off their captors. With a misplaced gunshot intended for two natives who had accosted Adam Tempus, Mr. Darvy's first mate, Paco DelArroyo, delivered a mortal gunshot wound to Adam's chest. Notwithstanding the heroes' superior firepower, the heroes were overpowered when a giant mechanical figure emerged from the trees, appearing in the form of a giant, primitive headhunter, complete with tribal mask and giant spear . . .
Episode Nineteen: Primordial Prometheus
Overpowered by their captors, the heroes were taken to a marble hall deep in the jungle, where they were met by another Atlantean scientist who had managed to escape extinction, Gaius Appellius. Gaius Appellius explained that he had discovered the secret of time travel, and had created a time machine to explore the earth of the future. His time machine, however, required a vast amount of energy to propel itself through the temporal continuum. Determining that the energy generated by the eruption of a volcano would suffice, Gaius Appellius had built a geophysic disruptor to activate the Atlantean volcano that destroyed the prehistoric continent, and jettisoned himself into the year 1934, where he took over the tiny island as the leader of the natives, and bequeathed his technological secrets to the Grey sisters, who, in turn, used them to construct weapons for the rising Axis powers. Having determined that his sojourn in the 20th Century was complete, Gaius Appellius had recreated his disruptor on the tiny island to once again traverse the eons.
When Dr. Xan realized that Gaius Appellius had caused the volcanic eruption that destroyed Atlantis in order to propel his time machine into the 20th Century, he set off to destroy Gaius Appellius' geophysic disruptor. Juliet surreptitiously detached the piping connecting the disruptor to the volcano's core, and Mr. Darvy smashed the device with his powerful fists. Dr. Xan used Gaius Appellius' time machine against him to jettison the villain into null space, and, as the volcano on the island began to spew lava, he beseeched the heroes to search for more Atlantean technology and destroy it because "it mustn't fall into man's hands." As Cara, Adam, Juliet, Mr. Darvy and Paco narrowly escaped the burning island on their rowboats, Dr. Xan disappeared in Gaius Appellius' time machine with a flash of light . . .
Episode Twenty: Year of the Dragon
Meanwhile, when Jimmy Sung hired professional daredevil Max Galahad to perform at his village to celebrate the Chinese New Year, Max was greeted in Shanghai by Danny Mak and Jimmy's personal physician, Dr. Gregory McGreger, erudite American physician and student of the healing arts of many of the world's cultures. Charged with the Herculean task of keeping Max alive and healthy, Dr. McGreger led Max toward Jimmy's village where the festivities were to take place. On the way, a tiny street urchin picked Max's pocket, incurring the wrath of Danny and his bruisers, who pursued the little girl through the streets, until she flattened the lot of them with her quarter-staff. To save face, Danny offered to hire the young girl, replacing her long-neglected Western name, Claire Witherspoon, with the more appropriate "Number Nine," in honor of her position as the ninth member in the hierarchy of Jimmy Sung's Tong family.
As the group continued on their way, they encountered an old man apparently running for his life. Pursuing the man, the party came face-to-face with a company of Nazi soldiers, using deadly force to capture him. Major Steinholtz emerged, leading the Nazi company, and Danny Mak, confronting Steinholtz face-to-face, told him that rather than kill Steinholtz, "It would be a greater indignity to leave you alive," crippling the gestapo with a gunshot to the kneecaps. After a perilous rescue from the Nazis, the old man identified himself as Dr. Dimitrios Theus, a Greek scientist pursued by the Nazis for his knowledge about the millennia-old weapon known as Greek fire.
The party took Dr. Theus and "Number Nine" to Jimmy Sung's house to clean them up. There, Dr. Theus told them of urgent business he needed to attend to in a nearby marsh. The group, leaving Dr. Theus behind, investigated the marsh to find a company of Nazi soldiers, along with Lily and Rose Grey, searching for uranium deposits with a Geiger counter. As they headed back to the village to inform Jimmy Sung, a giant, mechanical dragon-shaped tank emerged from the trees, opening its cavernous gullet toward the tiny "Number Nine." From deep within, the pyrophobic "Number Nine" heard rumblings from its belly and swore she saw a deadly spark . . .
Episode Twenty-One: Year of the Dog
The rumblings from within the cavernous gullet of the dragon-tank turned to clankings, the clankings turned to thuds, and moments later, a hatch opened on the top of the tank and Sammy Palermo emerged, greeting Max and company excitedly. Bewildered, the group asked how Sammy came to be inside the tank. He recounted that Jimmy Sung had hired him to perform with Max at the Chinese New Year's Celebration, paying him with a new airplane, the Bellerophon II. When Sammy landed at a nearby airfield, however, Nazi soldiers commandeered the plane and Major Steinholtz, who recognized the plane's name from Vienna, told Sammy he would not leave China with Max, or at all! When Sammy asked if Steinholtz was going to kill him, the gestapo responded that "it would be a greater indignity to leave you alive," and shot Sammy in the knee . . . the wooden knee! As the Nazis investigated the Bellerophon II , Sammy made a break for it, jumping into the nearest vehicle, the dragon-tank, and disappearing into the marsh.
Once Sammy finished his harrowing tale, the group joined him in the tank and headed back to the airfield, where they found the Nazi soldiers loading boxes of "pitchblende" onto the Bellerophon II, a substance Dr. McGreger recognized as the ore from which uranium is mined. Postulating that the Nazis may be building an atomic weapon based on Madame Curie's research, the group pursued the taxiing airplane in the dragon-tank, which "Number Nine" managed to "soup up" with the amazing technical skills she learned in the back alleys of Asia's urban ghettos.
With an amazing death-defying leap from the hull of the tank amidst a barrage of machine gun fire, Max Galahad boarded the plane as it was lifting off into the Wild Blue Yonder. Crawling along its exterior and breaking in through an engine access panel, the two-fisted daredevil knocked the Nazi pilots unconscious and turned the plane back around toward the airfield. Down below, the remainder of the group fired the tank's deadly flame-thrower at the advancing Nazi soldiers and toppled a water tower to quell the flames on the airstrip. Bringing the plane too low over the trees and tearing the landing gears from its hull, Max belly-landed the plane in the soft mud of the airfield, knocking Major Steinholtz to the ground and mangling his wheelchair. No sooner had "Number Nine" extricated Max from the cabin of the planewreck did a squad of police arrive at the burning lot, announcing that the heroes were under arrest for decimating a government airfield. In the nick of time, Jimmy Sung pulled up in his limousine and dismissed the officers with little more than a wave of his hand, cavalierly explaining that his friends were merely testing "fireworks" for the up-coming New Year's celebration.
Danny, following suit with Lord Merryweather's destruction of the Grey automatic weapon dump on the tiny island in the Japanese protectorate, climbed on top of the dragon tank and drew his guns. "These Nazis are far behind the times," he noted, "This is Year of the Dog, not Year of the Dragon!" Firing into the open hatch of the tank and leaping from its hull, he blew the vehicle to smithereens.
With the destruction of the Bellerophon II, the group wondered how Max's stunt show would ever go on . . . until his friend Janos Proshaka showed up at Jimmy Sung's village to lend his services. The show must go on, after all, and Max wasn't about to deny this crowd his famous "Tailspin Swandive" . . .
Episode Twenty-Two: Poi for the Kill
Meanwhile, beyond the Far East, on the far periphery of the Western Hemisphere, Sir Heathcliffe, entitled to all the perquisites of a Belgian Army veteran from the Great War, was admitted to a military hospital in the Japanese protectorate of Hawaii to recover from his harrowing hunting expedition in Malaysia. Coincidentally, the hospital happened to be the very same facility where Cara and Juliet brought the injured Adam Tempus to recover from the misplaced gunshot wounds inflicted by Mr. Darvy's trigger-happy first mate, Paco DelArroyo after their harrowing adventure in the South Pacific. Reunited, the heroes met United States Navy Intelligence officer Commander Jack Perceval and his stalwart young companion, Seaman First Class Bucky Dougherty, who were sent to the island on a rescue mission. Commander Perceval invited the members of the Empire Club to join him for dinner, and the group arrived at a Japanese restaurant in a nearby town.
At dinner, the heroes became suspicious when Commander Perceval failed to return to the dinner table after briefly excusing himself. When they investigated his mysterious disappearance, Cara found an underground tunnel beneath the restaurant where ninja assassins were hiding. The assassins escaped through the tunnel, which led to the beach, where a submarine was waiting not far off-shore, and the Commander waited by the shoreline. Commander Perceval led the heroes to a cave deep in the jungle where they found, deep in the caverns, a cannon-like device not unlike Gaius Appellius' geophysic disruptor on the tiny island they had encountered in the South Pacific. This device, however, used sound waves to agitate the eruptive power of the Hawaiian volcanoes. Once the ninja warriors in the cave activated the device, the heroes kept them at bay as Cara countered the sonic waves of the cannon with her singing voice. Using her perfect pitch to determine the proper note, she belted out a tune that shattered the cannon and saved the tiny island from a fiery fate . . .