Apparently the trail, that had once been formed through the axis of the island, had been found of little use. It was overgrown by all manner of plants well-nigh to extinction.
The region hereabout was obviously the final retreat of many beasts, both timid and bold. Grenville found signs of at least one Malay bear and of many wild hogs in the thickets. He fancied he saw one flash of moving orange, where either his tiger or another of his ilk moved silently through the growth behind him. Of the monkeys there appeared to be no end; and the snakes were amply represented.
He was glad for every clearing that he came upon and crossed, and felt a decided sense of relief on achieving his hill at last. This worn old eminence of rock and substances volcanic was far more steep and rugged than the one where he had left Elaine. It possessed no caves, and no particular flatness at the summit.
Grenville explored it rapidly, considerably disappointed to find nothing of special utility upon its broken surface. He had hoped for some hard and useful stone at least, if not for actual flints. Completing its round in a haste that the rapidly increasing heat of the day considerably accelerated, he presently came upon an unusual ledge protruding from the slope's unpromising surface.
Here he halted in idle curiosity. The ledge was of sulphur—a blow-out from the hill's once molten interior, lying untouched and useless in the sun for the elements to wear away and sluice at last to the sea. With no particular purpose in view, he broke away a fragment, dropped it carelessly into his pocket, and continued on his way.
His gaze returned with a certain steadfast eagerness to the hill and camp beyond. He was not precisely disappointed on failing to discover Elaine, who might have been waiting to wave him a signal from the heights; he was somewhat concerned to know if all was well upon her rock. She was not to be seen at all about the place. He clambered to the top of a broken bowlder for a view more comprehensive.
This, too, appeared a wasted effort, at least as concerned Elaine. The island map, however, was laid out before him in a manner to complete his former survey of the place. There were several clearings thus revealed that could never be seen from the farther point of vantage.
Acknowledging each of these in turn, Grenville was once more about to direct his footsteps homeward when one of the smaller, near-by breaks in the jungle, quite at the top of a species of rift in the island's ruggedness, down upon his left, attracted a second glance.
For a moment he fancied some colossal remains, as of an animal long since extinct, were lying there in the clinging embrace of the creepers. He decided, then, it was a boat, but dismissed this notion as preposterous, so high above the water's edge, and so near the island's center, did it lie. About ready to conclude that certain giant shadows contributed much to round out a half-imagined form, his gaze encountered a bowsprit thrust through all the foliage, its identity not to be mistaken. The hull of a ship was undoubtedly there. He hastened down, expectantly, to make its better acquaintance.
The wonder when he came there was—how it came to be stranded so high and far above the water. As for the vessel itself, it was merely a rotted old shell, with its cargo bursting through its ribs.
So far as Grenville could judge from its fast-decaying remains, it had been an inferior type of the old-fashioned barque, and of very modest dimensions. Its masts, however, were gone, together with every accessible piece of metal that eager hands could remove. Its moldy and slimy old cabin had partially collapsed. Without effecting an entrance through the treacherous deck, Sidney could discover nothing respecting its interior.
He could peer through the ribs at several places along the hull, and even near the keel, by stooping low, but the most he could determine by such a superficial examination was that there was nothing even here that he could use. The cargo he thought for a moment to be chalk, or lime. He scraped a clean sample from the weathered heap, and rubbed it in his palm. Its crystalline structure was not that of either lime or chalk. When he placed a particle on his tongue, he dropped all he held with no further interest.
The stuff was common saltpeter. That the vessel had been westward bound, perhaps from Borneo, with this mineral common to so much of that tropical section, he understood at once. But to find her stranded thus so loftily was amazing. He scraped at the soil with the toe of his boot to dig below the surface.
As he had rather expected, seashells and pebbles of a former beach were readily brought to view. Some old upheaval had undoubtedly lifted beach, vessel, and all to this altitude above the tides, and left it there to decay.
Considerably disappointed to find the hulk so completely stripped of the metal furnishings of which he might have wrought some sort of tools or weapons, Grenville hesitated between an impulse to continue home to Elaine without greater delay, and a strong desire to investigate the cabin of the barque. The latter temptation was not to be resisted.
He grasped the branch of an overhanging tree and, by dint of much active scrambling, clawing, and thrusting his toes into various chinks, at length gained the planks of the slanted deck and broke his way into the one-time sanctum of the captain and his mates.
This, too, had been pillaged with exceptional thoroughness. There was, however, a passageway leading to another apartment beyond, where a door, half open, was revealed by sunlight streaming through the broken roof. Thither Grenville made his way—to behold an extraordinary sight.
The place was a room, partitioned off from considerably larger quarters. It contained one object only—a form, half mummy, half skeleton, that had once been a powerful man.And this was chained to the wall!
It was sitting propped against the lintel of a second door, a panel of which was raggedly broken out. It had never been robbed of its head. A strong, black beard still remained upon the emaciated face, and the eye-sockets stared straight forward at the door by which the visitor had entered.
Grenville was not to be easily dismayed, yet the attitude of this grewsome thing was very far from being pleasant. The being had been almost naked when he perished here alone with a heavy iron band about his waist. All this his visitor swiftly discerned while inclined to turn about and flee the place. He discovered, then, an additional mystery.
The skin, in a patch fully six inches square, had disappeared from the helpless being's breast. That it had not wasted away by a natural process was, moreover, perfectly obvious, since the square-cut edges of parchment, which the remainder of his cuticle had become by the mummifying process, were distinctly to be seen. It had been removed with a knife. It appeared to Grenville that the captive had been propped artificially where he sat, as if to guard the passage. A trickle of water, saturated with saltpeter, had served to embalm both his flesh and skin, in part.
That the cabin beyond had likewise been despoiled of its treasure was almost a foregone conclusion. However, Sidney stepped closer to the silent form and peered through the broken panel.
The room into which he was gazing was dimly lighted by the rays of daylight filtering through a number of cracks which the weather had opened in its ceiling. When his sight grew accustomed to the darkness, he saw that the place had evidently served not only as quarters for the former crew, but likewise as a storage hold for ropes, paints, extra furnishings, and, doubtless, victuals.
Its contents lay scattered about in confusion and decay, yet promised more "treasure" for Grenville's needs than all the rest of the vessel. He drove his shoulder against the door, and its lock broke the rotted woodwork away with a suddenness the man had not expected. He passed the mummified guardian at the portal somewhat hurriedly, as he lurched inside the chamber; and he nearly fell across a box that had spilled out a dozen old pieces of brass.
Upon these he pounced with avidity, despite the fact they were greenly incrusted with "rust." Among other articles of plunder thus provided to his hand were several row-locks, a broken turnbuckle, a dozen at least of useless hinges, and a hatful of screws more or less cemented together.
With vague ideas of employing the metal somehow, he filled his pockets with the smaller articles and looked about for possible tools. From a broken locker in a corner much similar scrap stuff had fallen. Here was a large brass porthole rim, parts of a broken binnacle, half of the brazen cap from a towing-bit, two heavy bronze handles of swords now fallen to pieces with decay, an old brass lantern with a useless lamp, a large coil of excellent copper wire, a ball of lead, and remains of several iron marlinespikes, mere effigies now in flaky rust.
From beneath a heap of rotted cordage a greenish cylinder protruded. Grenville drew it forth. It proved to be a small brass cannon, unmounted, and apparently filled with mud. Near by he discovered the rapidly disintegrating remnants of an old-time flintlock musket. This was a priceless treasure, for the flint, which was still intact. He likewise saved a bit of the steel that the cordage had protected.
The thin and wasted skeleton of a hand-saw hung upon a hook. When he took the blade between his fingers it fell apart like paper, charred, but still holding its original form. Not an object he found of iron was worth removing to the camp. Resolved to return at an early date, to annex the old cannon and such other heavy bric-à-brac as he could not conveniently carry away to-day, Grenville finally left the mysterious dead man still sitting in chains beside the door, and once more regained the wholesome earth.
He finally glanced at his watch. The time was nearly twelve! He had been for at least three hours away from Elaine, who was waiting alone upon the hill! Back to the trail, and then along its sinuous windings through the jungle, he strode at his swiftest pace.
When he came to the final clearing before the towering rock, he was all but paralyzed with dread at a bit of drama being there enacted.
At the edge of the jungle stood Elaine, her arms and jacket filled with fruits she had gathered against his coming. By the foot of the trail that ascended to their camp, posed in a waiting attitude, his long tail only in motion, gracefully sweeping his great tawny side, was the tiger that wore the golden collar.
Not a sound escaped from Elaine's white lips, as she turned to glance across at Sidney. Then she limberly sank on the earth.
A short, sharp cry was the only note that Grenville uttered.
The tiger had turned his blazing eyes on the man he but partially feared. Sidney was coming less at him than towards the helpless, prostrate form that lay upon the grass.
The man had forgotten his danger in his greater concern for Elaine. He reached her side before he confronted the jungle beast, who still remained undecided. Slowly then, deliberately, the malignant animal, superb not only in his strength and splendid proportions, but also in his arrogance, his indifference to man, the master butcher of the world, ran out his tongue to lick his chops, stretched his terrible mouth in a fang-revealing yawn, and trod his way into the thicket.
The fruits she had gathered were scattered all about as Grenville lifted Elaine in his arms and carried her up the steep ascent. Not having actually swooned, she had fairly begun to revive once more before he reached the cave.
When he placed her down on a heap of half-dried grass she had thrown together while awaiting his return, a faint tinge of color was returning to her face, and her eyes dimly focused upon him.
"You've worked too much, that's what it means," he said. "You see you're tired."
"I'm—sorry," she faltered, faintly. "I really—didn't mean to be—so weak."
"Never mind," he said. "I'll kill the brute. His skin is certainly a beauty." With the utmost apparent indifference to Elaine's recovery, he went at once to the clearing for the bits of old junk he had dropped.
When he returned, his mind was still on the tiger.
"We've got to live—move about—and not be annoyed," he said. "If I had a single rifle! But I'll get him somehow, soon!"
Elaine still remained upon the hay.
"If he doesn't get us sooner," she replied, a little grimly, but not as one in fear.
"I shall wall up the trail," mused Grenville, aloud, looking about at the quantity of rock so readily afforded. "That much I can do this afternoon."
She sat up a bit more sturdily.
"I dropped our luncheon, I suppose.... I hope to do better, later on, when I get more used to conditions." She was mortified to think he had been thus promptly obliged to carry her "home" in his arms.
"You are doing fairly well," he said, in his off-hand manner. "We shall soon be all right. It's a fine and tight little island."
Her one idea was to get away as soon as possible.
"Shouldn't we put up a flag, or something, in case a steamer should happen to be passing?"
"As soon as I can cut a long bamboo. I must have both tools and fire as promptly as possible."
"You must be hungry," she remarked, arising rather weakly and going to the end of her cave, where all the water that remained in the half of the paw-paw shell had been carefully stored, in Grenville's absence. Then, emerging with her burden, she added, "I meant to have your luncheon ready, but we have almost nothing left."
"All that you gathered was left by the tiger," he answered, cheerfully. "The beast prefers more solid diet." Once more descending the trail, he presently returned with the fruits that had fallen from her arms.
They ate, as before, in the shade of her cave, for the sun on the rocks was becoming hot.
"The wall this afternoon," said Grenville, as he finally concluded his simple repast with a drink of tepid water. "Then our mast and signal of distress must be erected. I shall try for fire directly. I must make a bow and some arrows. A clay pit I found will provide us with earthenware utensils, and then—if only I could manage to melt some brass—— You see, the worst of it is, no stone I've discovered on the place is fit to use for a tool."
Elaine avoided the boyish gleaming of his gaze. "Are we thrust so far back as the stone age, then? It's really as bad as that?"
"Bad?" he said. "It's tremendously diverting. I've got to begin, as it were, with my naked hands. But fortunately, I believe, for us, the bronze and stone ages lap," and he drew from his pockets some bits of the heterogeneous collection he had brought from the rotting barque.
"You have found some metal?" Elaine inquired, excitedly. "But where?"
"In a wreck that must have arrived here years ago." He related as much as he thought advisable and undisturbing to the thoroughly wondering girl.
She could see no possible use for all the rusted bronze and brass he had earned away from the wreck so strangely discovered, but she made no discouraging comments to dampen an ardor which to her was not precisely comprehensible.
"I hope I can help," she told him, as she had before. "I'm afraid I'm not very clever."
"We'll see," he answered, cheerfully. "Necessity is rather a strict instructor."
But she could not assist him with the wall, at which he was presently perspiring. The stones he rolled and carried to the narrowest shelf or ledge that was scaled by the trail were far too heavy for her delicate hands and muscles.
"Can't I do something else?" she begged, eager for any employment. "There must be some work I could do."
"You might plait a basket of some sort," he said. "We shall need some presently."
He thereupon went below again, cut all he could carry of tough and limber creepers, and, fetching them up to the shade of her cave, instructed Elaine in such of the rudiments of basket-weaving as he himself could readily invent, and left her busily employed.
The wall he required to prevent any possible night attack on the part of the beast that was already inclined to stalk either one of them, or both, was not of any considerable length, owing to the narrowness of the pass he had chosen to block with bowlders. He had, however, to make it thick and high. By taking advantage of three large blocks, which he rolled down hill to the place selected, he secured a substantial foundation with comparative ease. After that it became a matter merely of carrying stone after stone, from their inexhaustible supply on the summit, to lodge in rough, uneven tiers to the height desired.
He had left a narrow gateway next the natural wall that made his structure complete. This he could block with a heavy log, or even more stones, for the night.
For fully three hours he wrought prodigiously, returning from time to time to Elaine, to guide and assist her with her basket. Between them they managed to produce from their rough material a crude, misshapen receptacle, coarse of mesh and clumsy, yet strong and not to be despised. Grenville expected to use it to fetch his clay from the pit.
It was not until this product of their combined ingenuity was fairly complete that Grenville discovered he could split the bark of the creepers readily, and tear out a smooth white core, like a withe, far more suitable to their uses. He then not only stripped out several full-length cores, but he also found that the bark or covering thus removed was constructed of numerous thread-like strands amazingly tough and long. These fibers were not so readily separated as the core had been from the covering with which they were incorporated, although their recovery was not a difficult operation. His inventive mind saw ample employment for them later.
The wall was not entirely finished when, at length, he left it for the day. He was weary in all his bone and sinew, despite the prodding of his will. He had made no attempt at kindling fire, and none towards procuring a mast to erect for a flag of distress. These were tasks that must wait for the morrow, with the others he was eager to attack.
The dinner at sundown was necessarily a repetition of the previous meals of the day. It could not be followed by the cheer and comfort of a fire, and the darkness, that drew on rapidly, brought a sense of chill and depression to Elaine, notwithstanding her bravery of spirit.
The wind had ceased, except for the merest intermittent puffs of breath that floated upward from the sea. Not even the lapping of the tide against the wall arose to break the silence. The stillness was painfully profound, though Elaine's imagination depicted a hundred nocturnal brutes of the jungle, prowling in every trail and clearing, in a savage quest for blood.
As a matter of fact, the nightly tragedies were already well begun. But it was not until some victim shrilly voiced its animal fear and agony, just beneath the towering wall, that Elaine had a realizing sense of her nearness to these creatures of the darkness, or the working of life's inexorable laws.
Her mind reverted, by natural process, to all the terrible occurrences crowded into her life within the last couple of days—occurrences that seemed so needlessly tragic, and all the alarms excited in her breast, not only by the frightful accident to the "Inca," but likewise by the almost unknown man upon whom she was now dependent.
She recalled with singular vividness every accent, every gesture, look, and deed that had accompanied Grenville's declaration. She burned again, with shame and indignation, to think of the things he had dared to say and do—the treachery done to his friend—the indignity done to herself.
She hated him now more intensely than before, since he seemed, by some enormity of purpose, to have been in some manner responsible for the fate that had brought her here in his company, absolutely at his mercy. That his promptness of action had saved her life she willingly and justly conceded—but to fetch her here, all by herself, to an island unpeopled and awful, far from the track of ocean-going steamers—with his threat to compel her love still ringing in her ears—this seemed to outweigh any possible service he had done or could ever accomplish.
What would he do, she wondered, on the morrow? When would he speak of his passion again? What means, in this situation, might he presently adopt to coerce the love she knew she should never bestow?
There could be no answer to her questions—least of all from the man himself. He, too, had fallen into silence, and a study of the vast and merciless problems, not only of existence till their escape could be effected, but likewise as to how that escape could be attempted, in safety, and where they must steer their ocean course to come to a land which should not prove inhospitable.
He seemed, for the time, to have quite forgotten the presence of the girl at the cave. This she finally observed. She wondered, then, what sinister outcome his brooding might presage.
Keyed to a pitch of nervous sensibility she had never experienced before, she retired at length within her shelter like a child thrust alone in the dark. Much as she felt she disliked the man, she found herself most reluctant to move very far from his presence, or refuse his protecting care. She was certain her dread of all it meant to be hopelessly cast upon this island, with one doubtful human being only for comfort and companionship, would haunt her to sleeplessness throughout the night. Yet she fell into slumber almost at once, and only dreamed she was still awake and worried.
It was still quite early in the evening. Elaine was finally approaching a thoroughly restful oblivion, when a low, moaning wail, and then shrill screams, abruptly ushered once more into play that hideous chorus of the morning, produced by some phenomenon of the tides.
"Sidney! Sidney!" came an answering cry; and Grenville arose, to see Elaine running wildly towards him from her cave.
It was not until the entire cycle of haunting sounds had been repeated for its final time that Elaine could consent to return to her pallet of grasses. And even when she had once more knelt upon this improvised bed, she could not consent to resign herself to the mercies of the night without one more glance towards Grenville's cavern.
She returned, unseen, to her door, and peered forth through the starlit night, discerning his dimly outlined figure, as he sat before his door.
He even arose as she paused there, uncertainly. She noted his listening attitude, the alertness of his pose. Then he sat once more upon the stone at his threshold, where she knew his club lay ready to his hand.
A sense of security, despite her bitterness of feeling, came slowly stealing upon her. She went back to her couch and slept.
Sidney, for his part, sat there alone, while hour after hour went silently by, and the constellations hung in higher arches. A thousand ramifications of thought he pursued in his active brain. But through them all, like an ever recurrentmotif, stole a troubled reminder of the tiger, twice encountered in the day.
To slay this contemptuous, savage beast that already drooled about the jaws at thoughts of a human morsel, was the one imperative business to be promptly executed. Elaine and himself could live on fruits, and neglect all else, without serious results, for a week, or even a month, but this affair was not to be delayed.
He thought of pitfalls, giant traps, and automatic engines of destruction by the score, each deadly device absurdly impracticable and beyond all power of his achievement. His mind, accustomed to civilized ways, ran in higher ingenuities that were absolutely useless in this primal state of their existence.
When at length he leaned back against his wall and began to wonder if, in the end, he must arm himself with primitive man's crude bow and arrow, and thus engage the master prowler of the jungle, he was ready for Nature's claims. He slept there, too utterly exhausted to drag himself in to his bed. And there Elaine found him in the morning.
That day was a long one, of varied and wearying employments. The wall was finished across the trail, Elaine's too widely opened cavern was partially blocked up with stone, and, at length, in addition to searching the jungle for something particularly downy and inflammable for tinder, to use in making fire, Grenville went with his basket down to the clay pit and fetched sufficient of this moist and plastic material to mould a number of vessels.
This last useful art was not, however, immediately attempted. Unfired jugs and basins were absolutely useless—and as yet they had no fire. The search for tinder had resulted only in producing a silken, fluffy material that grew in a fat green pod. It was moist, when found, with the natural juices of the plant.
While it dried in the sun, under Elaine's supervision, Grenville worked at a stout, elastic tree-branch to taper out a bow. His stub of a knife-blade served indifferently against the close-grained wood, which, nevertheless, was obliged to yield to his persevering efforts.
At noon the weapon, save for the cord, was rudely finished. No arrows had been as yet provided. Obliged at this hour to replenish the camp supply of water, Grenville once more visited the spring. So fresh were the tracks of the tiger here, in the mire about the trickling stream, that he felt they must almost be warm. The brute was undoubtedly near at hand, but, perhaps, well fed, as before.
"There is nothing quite so important now as fire," was Grenville's remark, as he once more rejoined Elaine. "Without it we are practically helpless. With it—there is almost nothing we may not hope to achieve."
He had thought of a number of extraordinary and highly important implements and arts that only flame and glowing heat could render possible.
Elaine brought the fluff she had thoroughly dried, while Grenville cleaned his flint and steel. For an hour, then, he strove in vain to ignite his bit of tinder. It was not at all an easy matter to strike a spark from the stone. What few brilliant specks of incandescence sped occasionally downward like vigor transmuted into swiftly fading stars from Grenville's varied and over-eager strokes, either died on the air or missed their mark or struck it and found it uncongenial.
"This must be a vegetable asbestos," he finally declared. "If I had just a pinch of powder, this flint might recognize—— By Jove!" and he started at once to his feet. "I'm the greatest fool on legs!"
"What seems to be the trouble?" said Elaine, who could not possibly comprehend his meaning. "Have you made some sort of mistake?"
"I've been asleep—my brain defunct! Excuse me half a minute!"
He started madly down the trail, running like a boy. Before Elaine could do more than stare in wonder at his antics, he had reached the bottom of the wall, darted across the clearing, and disappeared in the jungle growth beyond.
He smashed his way hotly to the wrecked old barque, and, pawing deeply beneath the surface of the wasting saltpeter, that had been for long somewhat protected in the hold, promptly filled two pockets with the mineral, and went racing back as he had come.
But beyond the clearing he altered his course to enter the region once blackened by fire. Here he went directly to the hollow tree he had once before examined, and, wriggling inside, through the ample orifice burned out by the flames, he attacked the charred interior with his knife as if his very life depended on his haste.
In the briefest time he had chipped off more than a double handful of crisp, but inferior, charcoal. Retreating no less promptly than he had entered, he gathered this carefully in a giant leaf, and hastily rejoined Elaine.
"Powder!" he said, belatedly explaining. "Everything lying here and ready, and my brain a howling blank!"
To Elaine this was not precisely clear.
"There is gunpowder here on the island?"
"No! The ingredients merely. But any child—— Ah! here's my bit of sulphur! There's a ton of it ready to be gathered. Powder? I can make enough to blow a dozen tigers into ribbons! The wreck is full of niter and, once we have a fire, I can burn all the jungle into charcoal!"
The mystery had not entirely lifted for Elaine, but this she hardly expected.
"How can I help?" she asked him, quietly. "There must be something I can do."
"It's a matter of grinding these materials," he answered, more calmly, depositing sulphur, saltpeter, and charcoal on a rock before them. "It's a simple composition, after all."
Barely less feverishly than before he began a search for suitable stones to employ as mortars and pestles. There were many small bowlders slightly hollowed by the elements, but a number of these had surfaces ready to crumble, and were, therefore, reluctantly discarded. In throwing about some loosely huddled fragments, to liberate a smooth, hard slab of stone that was dished from its edges to its center, Grenville was doubly rewarded by coming upon a large, thick seashell, practically perfect.
With this and the basin of harder rock, he returned at once to the shade. He was soon reducing the charcoal, while Elaine no less industriously attacked the lump of sulphur.
"We need a little only for a trial," he said, as he presently sifted out his powdered product, and began to grind the niter. "I wish I remembered the proportions."
In his haste to obtain results as soon as possible, he finally shook up and ground together a large-sized pinch from each of the three materials, producing thereby a grayish, unpromising mixture, decidedly too rich in both the charcoal and sulphur.
This he placed on a rock, a safe distance away, and attacked with his flint and steel. Elaine had ceased her grinding operations, to stand at his side and watch. He struck, perhaps, a dozen times before he produced a shower of sparks—and nothing occurred. He looked at the stuff for a moment, helplessly, discouragement swiftly lodging in his bosom. Half-heartedly he struck the steel again.
A single spark flew hotly from the flint. It seemed to curve to the outside edge of the powder. Instantly, however, the mixture was ignited.
It did not burn in a quick, fierce flash, but more with a sputtering, imperfect combustion, productive of stifling fumes. Grenville's hand was slightly scorched—but his joy in the triumph was complete.
"We're kings!" he cried, sublimely indifferent to genders. "We're monarchs of all we survey!" He leaped up, waving his flint about his head, his face outbeaming the sun.
Elaine was vaguely glad of his results.
"I'm afraid I don't understand it in the least."
"Not at all necessary," he informed her, candidly. "It's the very worst powder ever made. My charcoal is poor and my proportions wrong, and I only half ground it all together. But it burned! That's enough for me—it burned! It assures us a fire, and I'll make a new batch, that will go off like a Spanish revolution!"
He went below at once to gather twigs and fuel, bits of dried grass, and other kindling, and brought a large bundle to the terrace. More carefully, then, he mixed and ground his succeeding sample of the powder. Recalling more clearly the accepted formula, he increased the proportion of saltpeter to something nearer seventy-five per cent. of the whole, approximating thus the standard long since established.
Aware that, when he finally came to manufacture an explosive of higher efficiency, he would do much better to wet the ingredients and later dry the finished product, he now proceeded, as before, merely to try for a fire.
Thus he presently laid a train of his grayish mixture from one small heap to another, in a place selected for his trial. Over one of the powder pyramids he arranged his combustible straws, twigs, and branches with the nicest care. And when, at length, he struck a white-hot star, divinely potential, into the midst of the second heap, a hissing snake of incandescence and smoke darted swiftly along the surface of rock—and his fire leaped into being.
On the towering rock, as on an altar, the flames that meant life to the exiled pair rose goldenly bright and clear.
A strange exultation in Grenville's prowess possessed Elaine, as she stood by in wonder, looking on his face.
"It shall never go out," he told her, presently, "not if I can prevent it."
There were woods in abundance about the base of the tufa cliff that would burn almost as slowly and retain their glow about as long as the hardest of anthracite coal.
Yet it was not on these that Grenville depended, that particular night, to maintain the fire he had conjured from flint and steel. All those long dark hours he served his altar flame with fuel gathered for the purpose. An easier method for its preservation, by means of the woods that were promptly discovered, he adopted, however, very soon.
Each day that was ushered in and closed by the island's haunting wails and chorus, now beheld some new development in the plans that Grenville was laying. Elaine, less disturbed by the hideous sounds, might have learned more promptly to accept them as part of the ordeal of living in this extraordinary fashion, had they always come at stated hours. But, born of the tides, they came with the tides, which, all the world over, shift with each day till every hour of the twenty-four has had its visitation. Like a horrid reminder of the brevity of life, the thing was fore-ordered to rise unexpectedly, fret forgetful senses, and linger longest, apparently, in the deadest hours of the night. Concerning her companion, her mind was far more calm. Her distrust and dislike were unabated, but he gave her no cause for added worry.
By the third day after his fire had been accomplished, Grenville had considerably altered their aspects and prospects of living. Their bamboo flagpole stood in a crevice of the highest rock, with "rags" of banana leaves idly flapping out a signal of distress; a number of pipkins, large and small, were grayly drying in the sun, to be subsequently fired; his bow was strung, beside three unfeathered arrows, crudely tipped with points that Sidney had pounded out of screws; charcoal was burning, down in the blackened clearing; a number of traps and dead-falls were nearing completion; and several basket loads both of sulphur and saltpeter were stored in caverns, which the man had roofed to protect them from the rain.
Much toil had been involved in these achievements. The bamboo pole, for instance, had been most laboriously burned off, close to its base. To accomplish this end, the man had carried coals of fire to the estuary swamp, created a blaze, and repeatedly heated his longest piece of brass, which had slowly charred a channel through the wood when smartly applied to its surface.
The cord that secured the "flag" upon this serviceable mast, had been made, like the string for the bow, by twisting together innumerable threads of the fiber imbedded in the bark of the creepers. This had then been "waxed" with the glutinous ooze from the nearest rubber tree, with which the jungle abounded. He had also found wild sisal in the rocky places of the island. This plant had a leaf like a bayonet, sometimes six feet long, and readily split into fibers of most astonishing strength, especially when three were braided into a cord.
Considerably to Grenville's amazement, the molding of jugs, some crucibles, and other essential vessels suggested by the presence of the clay, was not at all a simple matter. His material, which at first was mixed too soft, was readily stiffened to a workable consistency, and the bases and first six inches or more of flaring walls of his pipkins had been fashioned as a child would fashion "pies." It was when he undertook to crimp and contract this flaring rim that the craftsmanship known to the potter required once again to be evolved.
For a time the longer he wrought at the stubborn material the more completely Grenville was defeated by the clay. He discovered at last, as similar workmen in every age and clime have ultimately discovered, that potteries thus constructed by hand must be built up in rings, one ring at a time, especially where the walls draw in to an ever narrowing diameter.
When, at length, this simple fact had been established—the first success having come to Elaine, whose feminine wit had been nimbler far than the man's—a highly respectable family of jugs and useful receptacles had rapidly come into being.
Mid-afternoon of this busy day found Grenville engrossed with his labors. Despite the fact they had not yet dined on anything but fruit, he was preparing salt for meat. The shell he had found was full of water from the sea, evaporating rapidly in a bed of hot ashes and coals. This, however, was resigned to Elaine's efficient vigilance, while Sidney worked absorbingly to complete a number of small clay molds designed for the casting of tools.
When, at length, the last of these was done and set aside to dry with the jugs and assorted vessels, he glanced briefly up at the sun. There were several hours of this blazing light remaining. Resolved in one moment to hasten to the jungle with his bow and the unfeathered arrows, which might be relied upon at easy range to fly sufficiently straight for all his purposes, Grenville determined in the next to make them a bit more certain.
A branch and leaf from a freshly despoiled banana plant had suggested "feathers" for his shafts. It was the work of a moment only to cut out and trim a slender bit of the fibrous branch from which the leaf substance projected. The leaf part itself, which was rather tough, and considerably like a stiffened cloth in texture, he cut to shape no less quickly. Then, binding on each of the arrows a trio of these improvised "rudders," he took up his club, informed Elaine he might be absent half an hour, and descended at once to the clearing.
His porcupine, seen no less than half a dozen times when his arms had been burdened, or his club was not at hand, was not to be found for all his elaborate searching, now that he was desirable for dinner. Naturally, Grenville had no particular preference for porcupine where pheasants were not impossible. But the fact that the bristling hedgehog is not to be despised, he knew from past experience. Moreover, he had fondly hoped this somewhat stupid quarry might be readily found and taken.
Notwithstanding the fact that for three days past not a sign had been vouchsafed him of the tiger, Grenville took to himself no fulsome sense of security as he made his way slowly through the jungle, towards the estuary swamp. The island was small; the brute was always near—and some day the contest between they two must be waged to a definite conclusion.
The axiom is old that the most game is seen when the huntsman has no weapon. It seemed to Grenville, slipping as noiselessly as possible down towards the water, where birds and beasts had always been encountered, that the island had been suddenly deserted. He saw not a thing, beyond the vaguest movements in the trees, perhaps for the very fact he moved so cautiously, and thereby assumed an aspect that was crafty, sinister, or suspicious.
Some reptile glided to the water, starting a ripple on the surface, but not even its head was visible to the watchful eyes of the man. An arrow was notched upon his bow, and, while the practice in which he had indulged had been far too brief to develop the skill he knew he might finally acquire, Sidney was certain that up to a range of five or ten yards his shaft would prove fairly deadly.
He had heretofore seen no game at all that was not, in fact, almost under his very feet. Of the pheasants, flushed before on at least three separate occasions, he detected not so much as a hint. The monkeys were silent. Not even the noisy parrots flew out with their usual disturbance. All about the growth of bamboo he trod, wherever a space was open, but in vain.
Reflecting that the pheasants might have gone beyond, to a section where rocks and shrubbery doubtless afforded the seeds or berries on which they would probably feed, he started more briskly towards the trail that would take him past the wreck.
He had not entirely cleared the bamboo growth when, abruptly, there in the open space before him, hardly fifteen feet away, a wild hog paused, fairly startled to inaction where it had entered the clearing from the jungle. It had turned its head to stare at the man inquiringly. Its two little eyes, maliciously gleaming, increased its threatening aspect as the bristles slowly rose on its back.
Without making the slightest unnecessary movement, Grenville raised his bow. He drew the arrow fairly to the head. A sharp twang followed instantly. A streak of gray sped swiftly and obliquely towards the earth. Then, for a second, Grenville saw the stout shaft quiver where it was buried in the base of the creature's neck.
One challenging grunt the wild hog uttered, starting as if to charge. But the arrow had shattered the nerves that make for rage and courage, cleaving to the seat of life itself.
The boar staggered blindly, instinctively, back to the dense, concealing jungle.
Grenville heard it grunt once savagely, as it broke its way past interfering branches of the growth. He realized it was escaping, that it might reach a hole or other concealment before it fell, and cheat him of his dinner.
He dropped his bow, as a useless impediment in such a tangle, and plunged in a reckless manner through the shrubbery and vines where his quarry was no longer in sight.
The hog must have stumbled forward with considerable speed. A vibrating palm, ten feet ahead of his position, urged Sidney impulsively forward. He was baffled and retarded in a most exasperating fashion by the creepers woven through the thicket.
Obliged to make a slight detour, he smashed a path between two stout banana palms—and came upon a hidden clearing. There was one unexpectedly violent movement of the growth just opposite, and there he thought his hog was dying.
Instantly upon his startled vision impinged a blot of yellow color. The full active form of the tiger was immediately revealed, as the brute leaped forth and sank his teeth in the neck of the sinking boar.
There was one shrill mort cry only as the hog became inert. Half raising the limber form in his massive jaws, the while his eyes wildly blazed his challenge to and defiance of the man who had halted in the clearing, the great supple creature, with the studded gold band about his neck, slowly strode once more within the jungle.
With a horribly disquieting comprehension of the fact he had doubtless been stalked for the past half hour, which fully accounted for the absence of game along the trails, Grenville retreated from the place. Why he had not been leaped upon and instantly slain was too much to understand—unless the unknown beings who had placed a collar, like a badge of inferiority, upon the animal's neck, had so impressed him with a dread of man that he dared not make an attack.
All zest for the hunt had departed from his being when Sidney recovered his bow. Anger and exasperation took its place as he reflected on the ease with which this insolent, fearless beast could continue to rob him of his quarry. And one day, he knew, the animal's boldness would increase to a point where a treacherous leap would restore his undisputed mastery of all this bit of land.
"I'll kill him!" said Grenville, unexcitedly. "I'll blow him clean out of his skin!"
He went boldly down to the rotting wreck, climbed eagerly up to the slanted cabin, and saluted the dead man, sitting there in chains.
"Brother, I've come for the cannon," he said. "There's little else left for you to guard."
Although the small bit of ordnance would make a load of fully fifty pounds, Grenville determined, then and there, to make a clean sweep of all the old hulk's remaining bits of brass and bronze not appropriated earlier. He, therefore, heaved the cannon out through a gap in the rotting planks, and began a hurried overhauling of everything left in the lockers.
He had drawn out coil upon coil of ancient cordage, that broke like wetted paper in his hands, before the largest and last of the lockers had been emptied of its junk. This was a deep and comparatively sound sort of box beneath a former bunk. Its interior was absolutely dark.
Unwilling to overlook the slightest metal object, Grenville got down on his hands and knees, to peer to the farthest corner. There seemed to be nothing remaining in the place. Nevertheless, he reached well inside and swept his hand about the walls, till it came to a slight obstruction.
This was a screw-head, so far as he could determine, in the planking just to the left of the door, in one of the nearest corners. He pressed rather heavily against the moldy woodwork, and his fist went through, breaking away a decayed square of wood that had once been a tiny door.
Convinced at once that a small and, heretofore, undiscovered locker, of insignificant dimensions, had been made between the walls of two of the usual compartments, he conceived it to be a secret hiding-place, and strained the full length of his reaching arm, blindly to explore its interior.
He could not touch its wall at the rear without crawling fully inside the larger locker, and for this he felt but little relish. With a plan worth two of that discomfiting scheme, he arose and kicked out the paneling from the front of the narrow box.
Once more he knelt, and thrust his arm to the end of the place. His fingers came gropingly upon a round, metallic object, wedged tightly down between two supports of wood. He broke it out in his vigorous way, and drew it to the light.