With a rattle and scraping along the deck, the device with the two prone figures desperately clinging to its surface, was halted and tilted nearly level as it struck a spar and partially mounted upon it.
A sudden glare lit up the scene where the fire had burst through shattered windows. Screams yet more appalling than those already piercing the gale arose with the movement of the vessel. A picture grotesque and monstrous was for one awful moment presented. The huge iron entrails of the vessel heaved up into sight with her breaking. Her funnels, masts, and superstructure pointed outward, strangely horizontal. Innumerable loose things rattled down the decks. She belched forth flame and clouds of steam, against which one huge iron rib, rudely torn on its end to the semblance of a giant finger, seemed pointing the way to inscrutable eternity.
The lantern, up at the "Inca's" masthead, describing an arc as it swept across the heavens, was the last thing Grenville noted. He thought how insignificantly it would sizzle in the sea! Then he and Elaine, with raft and all, were flung far out, by the suddenly accelerated velocity of the doomed leviathan, turning keel upwards as it sank. When they struck, their puny float dived under like a crockery platter, shied from some Titanic hand.
With all his strength the man clung fast to Elaine and the lattice-like planking of their deck. It seemed to Grenville, still submerged, he could never resist the force of the waves to wash them backwards to death. It appeared, moreover, the raft would never return to the top. A million bubbles broke about his ears. He felt they were diving to deeps illimitable.
With a rush of waters drumming on their senses, it shot precipitately upward at last, till air and spray greeted them together. Then, sucked deep under, anew, and backward, by the gurgling vortex where the ship had gone, and swirling about, pivoting wildly, as the raft now threatened to plunge edge downward to the nethermost caverns of the hungry sea, they met a counter-violence that forced it once more towards the surface.
The boilers had burst in the steamer's hold, with confusion to all those tides of suction. Erratically diving here and there, a helpless prey to chaotic cross currents in all directions, the float swung giddily in the mid abyss, while the water walls baffled one another.
Elaine, even more than Grenville, was bursting with explosive breath when, at length, the raft came twisting once more to the chill, sweet region of the gale. And even then strong currents drew it fiercely in their wake before it rode freely on the waters.
Dripping and gasping, Grenville half rose to scan the troubled billows for companions in distress. Not a sound could he hear, save the swash of the waves. Not a light appeared in all that void, save the distant, indifferent stars.
Elaine, too, stirred, and raised herself up to a posture half sitting. She was hatless. Her hair was streaming down across her face and shoulders in strands too wet for the wind to ravel. Her eyes were blazing wildly.
"The ship?" she said. "What happened?"
"Sunk." He stood up. Their platform was steadying buoyantly as it drifted in the breeze. "I can't even see the spot," he added, presently. "We couldn't propel this raft to the place, no matter who might be floating."
"It's terrible!" she whispered, faintly, as one afraid to accuse the Fates aloud. "Couldn't we even—— You think they are all—all gone?"
"I'll shout," said Grenville, merely to humor the pity in her breast. His long, loud "Halloo" rolled weirdly out across the wolf-like pack of waves, three—four—a half dozen times.
There was not the feeblest murmur of response. Yet he felt that, perhaps, one boatload at least might have sped away in safety.
"God help them!" he said, when the silence became once more insupportable. "He only knows where any of us are!"
"After all we'd been through!" she shivered in awe. "If only we two were really saved—— Oh, there must be land, somewhere about, if the Captain was trying to reach a port! But, of course, this isn't even a boat, and, perhaps, it will finally sink!"
He tried to summon an accent of hope to his voice.
"Oh, no; it will float indefinitely. It's sure to turn up somewhere in the end."
"We haven't food—or even water," she answered him, understandingly. "What shall we do to-morrow?"
"We are drifting rapidly northward. We may arrive somewhere by to-morrow.... You'd better sit down. It taxes your strength to stand."
"God help us all!" she suddenly prayed in a broken voice, and, sinking lower where she sat, was shaken by one convulsion of sobbing, in pity for all she had seen. She had no thoughts left for their earlier, personal encounter.
For a time Grenville stood there, braced to take the motion of the raft. The wind continued brisk and undiminished. Aided by tides, which had turned an hour earlier, to flow in its general direction, it drove the raft steadily onward over miles of gray, unresting sea.
The water slopped up between the slats whereon Elaine was sitting. She was cold, despite the tropic latitude. She was hopeful, only because she wished to contribute no unnecessary worry to the man.
Grenville at length sat down at her side, but they made no effort to converse. Elaine was exhausted by the sickening strain and the shock of that tragic end. For an hour or more she sat there limply, being constantly wet by the waves. She attempted, finally, to curl herself down and make a pillow of her arm, and there she sank into something akin to sleep.
Gently Grenville thrust out his foot and lifted her head upon the cushion of flesh above his ankle. The night wore slowly on. Three o'clock came grayly over the world-edge, where the waves made a scalloped horizon.
Slowly the watery universe expanded, as the dawn-light palely increased. By four Grenville's gaze could search all the round of the ocean, but nothing broke either sky or sea.
Five o'clock developed merely color on the water, but no sign of a sail or a funnel. Elaine still slept, while Grenville, cramped almost beyond endurance, refused to move, and thereby disturb her slumber.
But at six, as he turned for the fiftieth time to scan the limited horizon, he started so unwittingly, at sight of a tree and headland, flatly erected, like a bit of sawed-out stage scenery, above the waste of billows, that Elaine sat up at once.
"It's land!" he said. "We're drifting to some sort of land!"
She was still too hazy in her mind, and puzzled by their surroundings, to grasp the situation promptly.
"Land?" she repeated. "Oh!" and a rush of hideous memories swept confusedly upon her till she shivered, gazing at the water.
Grenville had risen to his feet, and Elaine now rose beside him. Somewhat more of the flat, wide protrusion from the sea became thus visible to both. It still appeared of insignificant extent, a blue and featureless patch against the sky, with one half-stripped tree upon its summit.
"I should say it's an island," Grenville added, quietly, restraining an exultation that might prove premature. "It is still some miles away."
"There must be someone there," Elaine replied, with an eagerness that betrayed her anxious state of mind. "Almost anyone would certainly help us a little."
What doubts he entertained of some of the island inhabitants in this particular section of the world, Sidney chose to keep to himself.
"It's land!" he said, as he had before. "That means everything!"
"Do you know of any island that ought to be in this locality?"
"I haven't the remotest notion where we are—except we are somewhere, broadly speaking, in the neighborhood of the Malay peninsula. The steamer must have drifted tremendously out of her course after we lost our rudder."
"Have you been awake for long?"
"I haven't slept."
"Have you seen or heard anything of any of the others?"
"Not a sign.... We may find some of them, landed on this island."
He had no such hope, and this she felt. She summoned a heart full of courage to meet the situation, however, and gazed off afar at the misty terra incognita enlarging imperceptibly as they drifted deliberately onward.
"It's fortunate," she said, "the steamers pass this way."
"Yes," he said, unwilling to shake this solitary hope that brightened her uncertain prospect, but he knew they were leagues from the nearest track that the ocean steamers plowed. "And I trust we'll find it entirely comfortable while we're waiting," he added. "We're sure to get dry and find something fit to eat."
She was silent for a moment. A sense of constraint was returning at last for their scene of the previous day. "It seems to be rather far away," was all she said.
"About another hour—if the breeze and tide continue favorable."
It was nearer an hour and a half, however, before they were finally abreast the headland with the tree, and swinging and turning slowly by the island's coast on the surface of a complicated tide.
The features of the land had developed practically everything usual to this latitude except habitations of men. That it was entirely surrounded by water was convincingly established. Indeed, it was not an extensive outcrop of some ocean-buried range, and, despite the luxuriance of its various patches of greenery and jungle, it was decidedly rugged in formation.
The edge past which the raft was leisurely floating was a broken and cavern-pitted wall of rock affording no promise of a landing. Above this loomed the solitary tree that Grenville had seen from a distance. Nothing suggestive of hearth smoke arose against the sky from one end of the place to the other.
This one vital fact, in her excitement, Elaine entirely overlooked. She likewise failed to note the look of concern that Grenville could not have banished from his eyes. The prospect of reaching a dry, firm soil outweighed her immediate worries.
"Couldn't we paddle in closer?" she said. "Where do you mean to land?"
"Where the Fates shall please," he answered, grimly. "Without even a line for me to take ashore we must not be over fastidious."
"We could swim—if we have to," she told him, bravely. "We seem to be floating farther out."
They were, at that particular moment. The powerful current carried them swiftly seaward a considerable distance, till at length the raft was drawn to a species of whirlpool, some two hundred yards in diameter, the inner rim of which was depositing weed at the edge of something like an estuary, indenting the shore of the island.
On the huge circumference of this whirlpool they were finally rounding towards the one bit of beach that Grenville had been able to discover. Yet when they approached within almost touching distance of this sunlit strand, the current failed, permitting the breeze to waft them again towards the center.
"Stand by to go ashore," said Grenville, resolving suddenly on his course, and overboard he slipped, at the float's outer edge, and, using his legs like a powerful frog, he pushed at the raft with sufficient force to overcome the action of the wind.
For a moment his efforts seemed in vain—and then the clumsy affair nosed reluctantly shoreward an inch, and was once more assisted by the tide. Ten feet out he found the water shallow and, planting his feet on the solid sand, drove the raft at once to the estuary's edge, where Elaine leaped lightly ashore.
Some startled creature slipped abruptly into the pool that the tiny harbor formed. This escaped Elaine's attention. A moment later the raft rode scrapingly over a bar that all but locked the inlet, and Grenville stood dripping on the sand.
"Welcome to our city," said he, an irrepressible emotion of joyousness and relief possessing him completely at the moment, and, going at once to the near-by growth, where a long stout limb had been broken from a tree, he dragged this severed member forth to the beach and across the estuary's mouth, where it effectually blocked the channel against the raft's escape. Then he folded a couple of large-sized leaves with his hands, secured each with a slender twig, and, giving one to Elaine for a cap, placed the other upon his head.
Elaine was no less relieved than he, so elastic and buoyant is youth.
"The villages must be on the farther side," she said. "What language do you suppose the natives speak?"
"Well—doubtless some Simian, in any case," he answered, having fancied one movement half seen in the trees beyond was made by an ape or a monkey. "I'd suggest you recall your fondness for fruit for breakfast."
She comprehended his meaning with amazing promptness. Her face took on its serious expression.
"You don't believe we shall find the island inhabited? We shall have only fruit this morning?"
"I am sure we shall find some fruit," he said, "and we must certainly look for water."
A sense of helplessness and despair attacked Elaine momentarily. She began to wonder, with alarm, how long they might be stranded on the place—and what attitude Grenville might assume. She had thoroughly comprehended the passion of his nature in the outburst she had seen. A sense of distrust she dared not show came creeping to her mind.
"We must make the best of it, of course," she said, as calmly as possible. "We can't even light a fire, I suppose."
"I certainly have no matches," he answered, cheerfully. "All I had were in my coat. Suppose we explore the island first and leave despair till after breakfast."
She met his gaze with fearless eyes that set his heart to pounding.
"I shall never despair," she answered, more bravely than she felt,—"at least, I shall try to do my part, till we are taken off."
He understood the challenge in her attitude.
"I felt that from the first," he answered, easily. "Perhaps we'd better begin by climbing up to the headland."
He caught up a short, heavy stick and turned about to force a way up through the rocks and tangled growth between the shore and summit.
And what a figure he presented—even to the frightened girl, whose anger still lingered in her veins—stripped, as he was, to his shirtsleeves, a powerful, active being, masterful and unafraid. With a strange, dreadful sense of isolation and the primitive, aye, even primal, conditions in which they had been cast, she followed helplessly at his heels for their first real look at the island.
The ascent was steep and difficult, so unbroken was the undergrowth, except where jagged and pitted rocks rose grayly on the slope. Bananas, nut palms, and mangoes Grenville promptly noted. Indeed, every tropical tree, shrub, and fruit of which he had ever learned was represented in the thicket, together with long, snake-like creepers, huge ferns, and many plants with which he had no acquaintance.
There was abundant life in all directions. Here, with a grunt, and beyond with a bound of startled surprise, some animal scuttled to cover in alarm at their approach. A small flock of parrots abruptly arose, flashing their brilliant plumage in the sunlight and screaming raucously. Half a dozen leeches, clinging firmly to the fat, green leaves next the ground, where all was moist and shaded, attracted Grenville's notice as they lifted their heads and groped about for flesh upon which to fasten.
Here and there in the tree tops a monkey obscured a patch of sky for a moment and chattered or squeaked a warning to his kind. Grenville, almost wholly convinced that man seldom or never visited the place, and puzzled to account for a fact so extraordinary, now emerged at the edge of a natural clearing and promptly discovered a small patch of sugar cane, reared above the grass and vines. He was certain that man had brought it to the island.
A half minute later he underwent a decidedly complex set of emotions. He was barely five feet ahead of Elaine, who was following blindly in his trail, a prey to new dreads of all the sounds about them, when he halted in a tense and rigid attitude of alertness. Elaine glanced quickly ahead.
Apparently a patch of orange sunlight was lifting from the grass. Then Elaine, too, saw the black, irregular stripes, the huge, topaz eyes, and the lazy movement of a mighty shoulder muscle, as the beast before them arose and blocked their path.
It was not the fact that he had rarely if ever seen a tiger so large that most impressed the man, thus unexpectedly confronted by this unfrightened monarch of the island—the brute bore a collar about his neck, gleaming with gold and the facets of some sort of jewels!
He had obviously once been a captive! He knew the form of man, if not his nature!
For a moment or more there was absolute stillness in that grassy arena, where two world-old enemies stood face to face in their first, preliminary contest of courage. A certain arrogance, a contempt of all possible adversaries, here in his undisputed realm, shone unmistakably in the eyes of the motionless brute. His paunch was rounded significantly. He had recently dined.
Grenville could think of but one thing to do, unarmed as he was, and unwilling to compromise an encounter so vitally important.
He let out a shout such as a demon might have uttered, and, rushing madly forward, with his club upraised, yelled again and again, his aspect one to strike terror to the heart of a giant. He was almost upon the astonished tiger when the brute abruptly fled. The roar the great beast delivered, as he bounded from sight in the jungle, was the sullen note of a creature that obeys, reluctantly, the command of one superior to himself.
"Now, then, a little discretionary haste," said Grenville, quickly returning to Elaine. "I prefer the top of the rocks."
But she did not move, so helpless was her will and so rigid all her being. Once more, with his arm about her waist, Sidney firmly urged her forward, on a beaten trail he took no time to study.
It led in a tortuous manner up the last steep acclivity, where, with every rod, the growth became less luxuriant, and the rocks more thickly strewn. Thus they presently came upon a second natural clearing, a sort of uneven terrace, some fifty feet lower than the dominating headland crowned by the solitary tree.
The trail to this final eminence was plainly scored along a narrow, crumbling ledge, where the volcanic tufa, comprising the ancient upheaval, had for years disintegrated in a honeycomb fashion that left all the bowlders and even the walls deeply pitted.
When they turned about together on this dominating mount, the island lay mapped irregularly beneath them in the purple sea, revealed well-nigh in its entirety.
In all its expanse there was not a sign of a human habitation.
They knew, without a word of argument, they were absolutely alone on this tropic crumb of empire, sole survivors of the frightful wreck, completely ignorant of their whereabouts, and surrounded not only by savage and inimical jungle brutes, but also by some mystery that was not to be understood.
"Well," said Grenville, presently, "such as it is, it's ours."
"Ours," said Elaine. A cold little shiver ran along her nerves, at thoughts of her plight between the man she had called a brute, and the still more savage creatures of the jungle. "Where are you going?" she added, as Grenville moved away.
"To look about for a moment," he replied, "and then I must pick some breakfast."
The examination of the hilltop was promptly concluded. It proved to be a flat, uneven plateau of small dimensions, with precipitous walls on every side, except where the trail led downward. Much loose rock was scattered on its surface. Three-quarters of its boundary rose perpendicularly out of the sea. The remainder plunged down into jungle greenery, and the natural clearing that lay between two dense, rank growths on either side. Not far from the center of the table-rock a fair-sized cave, that bore unmistakable signs of former occupancy and fires once ignited on its floor, afforded a highly acceptable shelter, both from the sun and the elements. It occupied, of course, a position that could be readily and easily defended.
There were other, smaller caverns close at hand, but none with a whole or unpierced roof. Fragments of broken clay utensils lay scattered about, together with the whitening bones of small-sized animals that had one time served some denizens for food. There was nothing in or about the principal cave of which Grenville could make the slightest use.
The view of the island from this point of vantage was not particularly encouraging. Midway of its rugged bulk, that jutted from the azure tides, and on the side directly opposite the estuary, another wall of rock loomed, gray and barren, above the tops of the trees. Behind this, at the island's farthest, left-hand extremity, a third "intrusion" of volcanic stuff rose to a height only barely lower than this whereon the raftmates stood. It was not, however, flat.
A portion only of the estuary was visible—the outer bay, where the raft was plainly floating. Save for areas covered with rock and brush together, the remaining surface of the island appeared to be thickly grown to jungle, the forest comprising foliage of infinite variety.
With Elaine walking silently at his side, afraid to be with him, yet more afraid to be alone, Grenville passed from this hasty examination of the island's general topography to a closer inspection of the perpendicular scarp of the terrace. On the seaward side it rose about one hundred feet above the mark of high water. Its right front appeared to overhang its base, a reassuring distance above the highest tree. Across its entire bulk at this place the cliff had once been cracked, and a "slip" had formed a ragged shelf. Then came the slope where the trail was worn, beyond which forty feet or more of unscalable tufa was reared above a section of the jungle once devastated by fire.
In the midst of this section, being rapidly reclaimed by vines and creepers, stood the shell of a huge old tree, the heart of which had been consumed, from the roots to its blackened top, leaving walls still thick and solid.
"Well," said Sidney, returning again to the principal cave, which he reinspected critically, "it doesn't take long to overlook our possessions. You'd better begin to make yourself at home, while I go below for fodder," and, taking up his club from a ledge where he had let it fall, he went at once down the long-abandoned trail and out across the clearing.
Elaine had followed to the scarp, where she watched till he disappeared. How helpless she was in the hands of this man, whose declaration and deeds had so aroused her indignation and hatred, she thoroughly understood. A sickening conviction that days might elapse before she could hope to escape, increased her sense, not only of alarm, but also of distrust in Grenville. His action in taking up his stick had not escaped her attention. Strangely enough, a horrible pang went straight to her breast as she suddenly thought of that tiger again—and of what it might mean if Grenville never returned. Whatever else might happen, nothing could be so terrible as to perish here alone. She tried to assure herself, however, that Grenville was thoroughly competent to cope with the dangers of the place.
Yet the silence of the jungle where she had seen him disappear, oppressed her unendurably. Not even a tree was shaken, to indicate where he had gone. Summoning all her resolution, she returned to the cavern, alone.
A slab of rock, once doubtless employed for a table, lay with one end resting on the earth, while the other leaned upon a second rock, against the wall of the cave. She lifted this slab to a second prop, then blew the last fragment of dust and sand from its surface, by way of preparing it for breakfast. She looked about, longing for further employment, but, inasmuch as two rude fragments of the rock already reposed beside her table for seats, there was absolutely nothing more she could add, either by way of utensils or furnishings, from the boulders scattered loosely on the terrace.
When she thought of leaves, whereon to serve what fruits the jungle might surrender, she started briskly for the trail—but halted at its summit. A horror of unknown things that might be lurking at the thicket's edge impressed itself upon her. Nevertheless, she shook it off, and, descending rapidly, soon filled her arms with large, clean "platters" from a rankly growing plant of the "elephant's ear" variety, then clambered back to her aerie.
Two of the leaves she dropped at the bend of the trail and left them there in the sun. Twice after that she returned to the edge, to search all the greenery for Grenville. Her uneasiness respecting his long absence was rapidly increasing when she turned once more toward the cave. He emerged at that moment from the farther thicket of the clearing, came unobserved to the winding trail, and discovered the leaves she had abandoned.
He was amazingly "loaded" with similar leaves for breakfast purposes, as well as with fruits, and a singular bowl of water, yet he paused, with a smile upon his lips, to discard every leaf he had provided, in order that Elaine's thoughtful effort at assistance might not be in the least belittled.
She met him just as he came to the top, and began to take a portion of his burden.
"Oh," she said, "you've found water—or is it the juice of the melon?"
"Water," he answered, moving towards the cave. "The bowl is half of a paw-paw, which, next to that spring itself, is the welcomest thing I've discovered."
She was glad to note bananas among his several fruits, but she made no further observations. More and more her sense of constraint increased, as she clearly foresaw her dependence upon and intimate association with this man, who had overstepped the bounds of honor to his friend, and to whom she had spoken in such anger.
Breakfast was soon begun. Elaine consumed all she could relish of the fruits, although neither the loco (loquet, a yellowish sort of plum), the guava—green and full of seeds—nor the custard apple, which was somewhat sickishly sweet, appealed irresistibly to her fancy.
She drank from a leaf, curled up to form a cup, and found the water decidedly refreshing and agreeable, despite the fact it was slightly flavored by the juices of the paw-paw shell in which it had been served.
Grenville leaned back, when his appetite was thoroughly appeased, and began to empty his pockets. He produced the remains of his broken knife, a few loose coins, a ring of keys, a pig-skin purse with several pieces of gold as its contents, the stub of a pencil, and his watch, which, by great good fortune, was waterproof, and still in good running condition, despite its several immersions.
Elaine was watching his movements, puzzled to guess his intent.
"Taking stock," he said, presently, "by way of facing the situation and formulating plans.... These trifling chattels are all I possess in the world—our world, at least—with which to begin certain labors. You probably haven't even hairpins."
Elaine had coiled her hair upon a twig. She shook her head, and faintly resented his allusion to the island as a sort of partnership property.
Grenville began to segregate his belongings.
"Money, keys, pencil, and watch—all mere encumbrances, absolutely worthless. One broken knife—invaluable. We shall require, as soon as possible, water-jugs, basins, cooking utensils, something to make a fire, implements to chop our fuel, some primitive weapons, and tools with which to fashion a boat. I must lose no time in exploring beyond the spring. I have found nothing yet that will especially lend itself to our uses."
Elaine's brown eyes were very wide. "You expect to remain here long enough to build a boat, when the raft—— I know it can't be rowed, of course, but—couldn't you try a sail?"
"We couldn't sail it in its present form," he answered, "even if we knew which direction to take when we started. With a small, swift boat we might venture a few explorations from the island as a base."
She was silent for a moment, and grave.
"You haven't much faith, then, in hailing some passing steamer?"
"I think it wiser to prepare against a probable wait that may be rather long." He read and understood her impatience with the situation—a situation rendered infinitely more complicated and delicate by what he had dared to say and do the previous afternoon.
Once more black dreads that she dared not permit to reveal themselves completely arose to engulf her mind. She could not doubt that Grenville knew, far better than herself, how meager were their hopes of immediate rescue or escape from this exile in the sea. More than anything else, however, she wished to be worthy of and loyal to the man to whom her plighted word had been given. That she owed so much to Grenville already was an added irritation. A braver, finer spirit than she summoned to her needs never rose in a woman's breast.
Her eyes met his with a cold look of resolution in their depths.
"I know you will show me how to help. I must do my share in everything. Can you tell how long it must have been since anyone was here?"
Grenville had never thought her finer—never loved her so madly before. Yet he quelled the merry demons of his nature.
"No," he replied, as he took in his hand a bit of bone, bleached cleanly white. "I can't even understand why an island so abundantly supplied with fruits and game, to say nothing of useful woods and the like, should be so utterly abandoned. There seems to be nothing wrong with the place, and much that is quite in its favor."
"Perhaps that tiger," she suggested.
Sidney shook his head. "It's something that goes a bit deeper—at least, there may once have been something sinister. The natives of all this part of the world are rather accustomed to tigers."
Her sense of divination was exceedingly keen.
"You think there is something worse? You haven't already encountered something more——"
"Nothing," he hastened to interrupt. "The problem of our daily existence affords our greatest present cause for concern—and I frankly admit I considerably relish the prospect of proving we are equal to all that our situation may demand."
She was not to be satisfied so readily.
"But there may be something wrong with the island?"
"Possibly—from a native's point of view."
"But—you are almost certain to meet that tiger again."
"All the more reason for getting to work at once." He arose in his quick, active manner, and once more surveyed their camp.
"A few rocks piled in your doorway," he continued, "and your cave will meet your requirements admirably. I should say mine would better be this small retreat, the roof of which I can readily restore. It is close enough to be neighborly, and is nearer the head of the trail."
The smaller cave thus indicated occupied a position suggestive of a sentry's box, before precincts to be guarded. Its opening faced the gateway of the trail, while its size was sufficient for the needs of any primitive man.
Elaine, who had mechanically followed Grenville from the shelter, looked resignedly about. She had failed till now to think, concretely, of actually remaining, perhaps night after night, in such a place.
"It was terrible!" she said, "—the accident—everything!—terrible!" She suddenly thought of the threat he had made—to compel her to love him as he loved her, before they should reach their home—and shivered anew at the unforeseen predicament in which she was plunged, and hated him more than before.
"Bad business," he answered, briefly, "but at present the task before us is to cut a lot of grass and strew it about on the rocks to dry."
He opened the stubby blade of his knife, glanced at it ruefully, and, selecting a bit of stone, began to whet its edge. But he halted the action abruptly.
A low, weird sound, like a human wail, came from somewhere over behind them.
The sound had no sooner died on the air than a second, far louder, and far more uncanny in its suggestiveness of someone in mortal pain, followed piercingly, up around the rock, and rang in their startled ears.
The third sound more resembled a scream. It was immediately succeeded by a chorus of hideous cries and moans, singularly distressing. They rose to a pitch incredible; they seemed to involve every accent of human grief and torture, and to wrap the rock escarpment completely in an agonizing appeal.
This chorus sank, but a haunting solo of wailing arose as before, to be followed again by the air-splitting scream, and at length once more by the mingling of many dreadful voices.
The island exiles glanced at one another inquiringly, Elaine blanched white with awe.
"By Heavens!—it can't be human," Grenville muttered, as the programme recommenced with only a slight variation.
To Elaine's dismay he started for the cliff.
"Mr. Grenville!" she cried, and helplessly followed where he went.
The wail was dying, in a horrid series of feebler repetitions, when Grenville came to the edge of the wall and peered down below at the water.
There was absolutely nothing to be seen in any direction. The direful sounds, fast progressing once more to that nerve-destroying climax, appeared to issue from a natural cove, a little along to the left.
Grenville continued around the edge, to a point directly above them. But here, as before, there was nothing in all the sea suggestive of boats or beings. The tide, Grenville thought, ran in and out with particular force, reversing at a certain point, and performing singular movements in a basin of hollowed stone.
Elaine had paused behind him, a rod or more from the brink. He waited deliberately for all the cycle of sounds to be repeated, then turned away with a smile.
"I think we have come upon the explanation of the island's uninhabited condition," he informed the girl, as he came once more to her side. "Those noises are made by the sea, forcing air to some cavern in the cliffs. It is doubtless repeated twice a day at a certain stage of the tide."
"It's horrible!" Elaine replied in dread, as a feebler rehearsal of the chorus filled all that tropic breeze, "simply horrible!"
"It may be our greatest bit of good fortune," Grenville informed her, sagely. "I much prefer those sirens to a colony of Dyaks who might otherwise live on the place."
"We shall have to endure it twice a day?"
"Possibly not. I may be entirely mistaken, concerning that. I can only be certain it is caused by the tide, and is, therefore, not to be dreaded."
For fully ten minutes, however, the tidal conditions were favorable to the sound's continuance. It subsided by degrees, the last moaning notes possibly more suggestive than the first of beings perishing miserably.
Meantime Grenville had gone indifferently about the business of cutting huge armfuls of the tall grass and ferns abundantly supplied in the clearing. This moist and not unfragrant material Elaine in silent helpfulness carried to the top of the terrace, where she spread it about on the rocks. She was certain Grenville was providing far more than they could use in reason, yet although his stubby knife-blade was a poor tool, indeed, for the business, he toiled away unsparingly, blithesomely whistling at his task.
"You may be glad by nightfall to burrow into a stack of this hay," he told Elaine as he brought the last load up the trail. "If you wouldn't mind turning it over from time to time I think I'll look about again to get an idea of the island."
Elaine had as little inclination to remain on the terrace alone, with all manner of worries respecting Grenville's safety, as she had to follow where he would lead through the shades and thickets of the jungle. She was aware, however, her presence at his side would be more of a care than assistance; while the necessity for his explorations addressed itself clearly to her mind. She made no confession of her natural wish to see him returning promptly.
He departed, with his club in hand, quite certain he should not be gone above an hour. He had not, however, reckoned with the jungle.
Despite the fact he had set his mind on the region about and beyond the spring, the flow of which formed the estuary, some wonder respecting the area once blackened and cleared by fire attracted his attention immediately upon his descent from the hill.
Through a fringe of scrub he forced his way to this region close under the walls, discovering old, charred stumps, many dead saplings, and quantities of half-consumed branches, affording a large supply of fuel. There could be no doubt the fire had raged within the previous year. Human visitors of some complexion had come, left this scar, and departed.
Hopeful of some enlightening sign as to who or what they might have been, he searched the earth about and between the shrubs and grasses with considerable care. Not so much as a bone, however, rewarded his scrutinizing gaze. He came to the tree trunk left hollow by the flames, and paused to marvel at its size. Above his head it was four feet through, while the base was certainly eight. An arch had been formed in its substance, near the ground, and into this he curiously peered.
Kneeling thus on the earth, he was readily enabled to look straight up through and out at the top. The hollow in the stout old jungle champion was fully two feet in diameter, and almost perfectly round. There was nothing else of interest to be found about the place, save a huge, smooth log, lying with one end resting on a rock, and long enough to make a splendid boat.
Attempting the passage of the jungle from this point across to the midway wall of tufa, Grenville expended fully fifteen minutes of the toughest sort of effort, and was then obliged to retreat once more to the trail. He encountered here the first wild animal discovered since his meeting with the tiger.
It was a porcupine, bristling with trouble for any attacking beast. Grenville could have slain it with his club. He was fairly on the point of providing this much meat for the sadly empty larder, when the fact that he could ignite no fire deterred his ready weapon. He thought, in that extremity, of his watch, the crystal of which might serve to give him a white-hot spark from the sun.
Trusting the porcupine might await the result of his quick experiment, he lost no time in submitting the glass to a trial. It formed a ring of brilliant light on the back of his hand, but the rays would not come to a focus.
"Go thy ways," he said to the porcupine, and he continued at once on his own.
Observing the trail more closely than he had on his earlier excursion, he presently discovered a divergence to the left that led towards the central wall of stone. Here he frightened a considerable troop of monkeys that swung in a panic of activity through the avenues of foliage overhead. There were likewise sounds of heavier beasts that escaped observation on the moist and thickly cumbered earth.
The trail under foot was rather well worn, and not, the man was certain, by the hoofs or feet of brutes. The explanation was presently forthcoming, at least in part, for the path emerged at a clay pit that lay against the frowning tower of stone.
Grenville could have shouted for joy as he took a bit of the smooth, sticky substance in his hand, and began thus promptly, in his fancy, making pots and jugs innumerable to meet their every need. The deposit had been previously worked. The evidence of this was unmistakable. But none of the tools employed by former craftsmen had been left for Grenville to discover.
He spent some time investigating all the mute signs of former activity expended at the pit, and finally glancing up at the cliff above, abandoned all thought of conquering its summit, and retraced his steps along the trail.
Where the path to the spring made a second fork, he continued straight on through the jungle. One glance only of the estuary, tortuously penetrating the waist of the island, was vouchsafed him through the thicket. Beyond this point, in swampy ground, flourished a forest of giant bamboo. The creepers and vines in that immediate section were particularly varied and abundant. The bird life was equally impressive. Hundreds of swallows were skimming in the air, a number of argus pheasants wildly fled from the visitor's presence, parrots screamed and wheeled in huge flocks above the light green bamboo foliage, and several fine flamingoes made shift to find concealment in the reeds.
"It's a haunted paradise," Grenville muttered to himself, his thought having gone for a moment to the wails and moans that had startled himself and Elaine.
Regretting that his broken knife was a wholly inadequate implement with which to assail such a bamboo stem as he would gladly have taken to the camp, he was once more making his way from the thicket when his foot crashed audibly through something brittle, on the earth.
He parted the shrubbery and uttered a low exclamation. He had stepped upon a human skeleton, white and suggestively huddled, every fragment of it perfect—except that it lacked a head.
In a certain sort of anxiety Grenville searched about to find the missing member. The skull was not to be discovered. Persuading himself this might be accounted for by many natural explanations, and resolving to keep his discovery entirely to himself, he forced his way around this grewsome inhabitant—and came upon another.
This one he did not strike with either foot. It lay outstretched before him, in company with scattered and broken bits of rock—and, like its neighbor, it was headless.
Had some monstrous head-hunter written "Dyaks" on all the empty lattice of those human ribs, Grenville could not have been more convinced of what this business meant. He returned to the trail accompanied by a sense of dread that all but sent him back to Elaine. His thought was entirely of her, and of their helplessness, cast thus alone upon this unpeopled island, clean stripped of weapons and of all things else save their wits and bodily strength.
"We've got to escape," he told himself in a new, swift fever of impatience. "There is not an hour to lose!"
He continued on through the jungle towards the hill at the farther end.