Grenville made no attempt to sleep as the long night went laggardly by. He dozed, from sheer weariness, now and again, with his back against the rocks, but two or three times in every hour he rose from his place to go out on the ledge, where he listened to catch the slightest sound that might be made above the ceaseless lapping of the water. He would then return to the gallery, assure himself the smoldering brands were ready for use at any moment, and once more sit down to wait and nod.
Elaine was equally sleepless. Far more than Grenville she feared night treacheries on the part of the Dyaks from the jungle. The state of her nerves, since the terrace was so readily accessible to the head-hunting butchers, permitted no thought of sleep. Moreover, never since their arrival on the island had Grenville so far exiled himself from her side throughout a night. She had always felt protected heretofore, and upon that protection had relied.
As restlessly as the man below she came to the door, times without number, to listen for sounds the jungle might surrender, as well as to watch through the darkness for the slightest inimical sign. Not a sound, however, did the night vouchsafe her straining senses; not the slightest movement in all the world of shadows, life, and tragedy about and below her position could her blazing eyes detect.
She had never known a night so long, or one so haunted with fears. Her imagination played cruelly upon her heart, picturing one dread scene of butchery after another, with Sidney completely overwhelmed and finally slain, while she, no longer desirous of life, awaited her fate in a dumb and dulled indifference. She was certain the morning would never dawn again, or, if it did, the one man pitted against these savages might not even have time for one faint tug on the cord about her arm, more like a farewell than a signal.
It was a red and troubled break of day that finally reddened the eastern sky, where clouds were banked above the sea. Grenville had dozed for perhaps as much as twenty minutes. He awoke with a start from lurid dreams in which he had fancied himself awake after criminally oversleeping, only to find himself and Elaine pinned down by a horde of the merciless brutes to whom human heads are trophies.
The red of the sky for a moment confirmed some remaining disorder of his thoughts. He had stumbled quickly to the cavern's mouth, from which the sanguinary streaks and blotches, now painting the far horizon and dully reflected in the sea, were confusedly presented.
The coolness of the haunting breeze, that crept like a presence about the silent island, restored him soon and cleared the mists from his brain. He stood for several minutes, gazing listlessly forth, disgusted with the outcome of the night.
Once more he returned to the gallery to inspect his brands of fire. And once again, on returning to the chamber, his inclination was to prop his back against the wall and let himself sink in slumber.
The dawn-light was slowly increasing. He watched it dully for a moment more, and yawned as he stumbled heavily towards the utter discomfort of his resting-place.
Once more he adjusted his weary limbs upon the ledge, reflecting on what expedient he must now adopt, since this, hiscoup-de-main, had so egregiously failed. He thought he was planning brilliantly when he once more fell asleep. The slightest of sounds that was foreign alike to tide or breeze now failed to arouse his senses as his head came forward on his breast.
Not another sound was made where that one had strangely risen from the front of the shattered ledge. Even the sharpest eyes would have been for a moment tricked by the shadows of the rocky niche, where the tide was darkly swirling. A fragment of the lower cliff then appeared to be detached.
It was simply Grenville's catamaran, with two or three natives upon its deck, silently maneuvering to land. Back of it, just well off the frowning headland wall, the bow of a larger Dyak craft appeared for the fraction of a minute.
The head-hunting fiends had arrived! They had chosen the hour when exhaustion finally culminates and claims the helpless sentinel, heavily dreaming that all is well!
Aware that the slightest disturbance might warn their intended victims in the cave, the Dyaks labored with the utmost caution to fetch the float to the ledge. This they presently accomplished, fending it off at a vital moment lest it scrape against the rock.
Two of the half-clad demons now landed, their movements as sinuous and silent as a serpent's. Instantly flattening down upon the tide-lapped shelf, while the third of their party skillfully guided the catamaran once more to the larger craft without, they waited as patiently as the shadows, of which they seemed a part.
The plans of the crew on the boat without had been matured with much sagacity. The transfer of two more men to the raft was quickly and noiselessly accomplished, and once again the catamaran was permitted to swing on the tide's rotation into the open entrance of the inlet.
This second pair, with knives between their teeth and hands therefore unencumbered, were a trifle overeager to gain the mouth of the cave. One of them caught at the fissured edge of tufa with avid fingers, while the float was responding to the force of the whirl. His hold was rudely broken, yet so sharply had he dug in his nails that a fragment of rock was broken away. It plumped with a gurgle in the water.
Grenville was suddenly awakened—not so much by the sound the bit of rock had made as by something more subtle in the very air—a something only to be interpreted by that instinct surviving from ages dark and old.
He was suddenly alive to a sense of imminent danger lurking fearfully close at hand. None too soon and none too silently he rose to his feet, for there at the ledge the catamaran was halted and, even as the two impatient Dyaks landed, their companions came worming up the shelf.
A moment more and all must have been too late, as Grenville clearly realized. Indeed, with the utmost caution only could retreat to his gallery be effected without a betrayal of his presence. He dared not move swiftly from his post—and yet he must be quick!
Slowly and noiselessly withdrawing from his place beside the wall, he took one long step inwards, towards the door he must place against the open gallery entrance.
The dawn-light, redder and more intense, now cast an intangible shadow in the chamber as a Dyak's head appeared above the ledge. The fiends were all but on his heels!
He slipped within the passage, without creating the slightest sound, save the loud, tumultuous pounding of his heart. Lifting the door no less cautiously into its proper position, he left a crack, that was barely a half-inch wide, through which to watch his visitors, writhing like so many pythons over the shelf and into the ebon well of gloom.
Their plan was to crawl to the confines of the cave—unless they should creep by chance upon their sleeping victims sooner, leaving a couple crouched outside to prevent the quarry's escape. Torches were not to be lighted until every man was posted, and then would be thrown to the center of the cavern where their light would reveal the chamber's occupants, while the outer rim of darkness still concealed the gleaming knives. A counter attack would be rendered out of the question. The cordon would be complete.
Three of those strangely-moving shadows Grenville plainly discerned. There was nothing more to be seen—and nothing to be heard. That several Dyaks were almost at his feet he felt, but could not have proved. He had hoped for half a dozen at the least. He hoped for them still, and deliberately waited, trusting they might arrive.
It seemed such a pity to waste his mines and not obliterate the lot! He wondered if more of them might not come—then how he should know, if they did.
Meanwhile, the three not included here in the cave-attacking party were equally active above. The red of the dawn had seen them advancing through the jungle where they meant to take the hill and block the retreat of the victims to that eminence by any chance of extra ladders or white man's baffling magic.
Elaine beheld them, through the strengthening light, so soon as they crossed the clearing. They paused there as if for a signal, which they may or may not have received. It gave the girl, who had watched with an ever-increasing fever through the night and that blood-red dawn, a long wild moment in which to imagine fates untold that must have overtaken Sidney.
She was certain at last he was murdered in the cave, and that now, with the passageway finally known, the fiends, whose passion was taking human life, had come to complete their tale of butchery and plunder. Why else should they once more visit the hill at such an hour of the morning? They had barely waited for the dawn to make certain of their work!
She saw them coming furtively up the trail, aware, she was sure, that by means of the hidden gallery their movements might be seen. She had held a wasting firebrand in her tense little fist for the past two hours. And now—if only Sidney had told her what to do in such an extremity as this! If only it might be her duty to fire the cannon!
It seemed as if she must obey the impulse—and perhaps save both of their lives! The Dyaks were almost at the bridge. They must soon come fairly in range of the gun! After that—it would be too late!
Below, in the cavern, during this time, Grenville was haunted with doubts. He had waited in hopes other Dyaks would come, and not a sound had rewarded his straining senses. He began to fear he had waited too long—that the creatures whose shadows had crept within had searched all the place and departed.
Yet he knew that they could not have passed him and left him unaware. The light was now all in his favor, and steadily increasing. With a sudden determination to take what toll the Fates had offered, he groped his way back to his brands of fire, and then to the ends of his fuse.
Elaine, with her heart all but bursting, with excitement for which she had no vent, saw the head-hunters pause on the slender bridge before they crept upward as before. Her weight was leaned against the door till it moved a little from its bearings.
She was sure it had made some far-reaching sound that the Dyaks could not fail to hear. They had paused again—and again moved up the trail—and found her helpless. The cord on her arm!—if Sidney would only pull the cord——
The sharp little tug that suddenly came now startled a cry from her lips. Instantly thrusting away the door and bounding from the narrow ledge to the upper level of the terrace, she ran towards the fuse with her cone of fire, just as Grenville, down in the gallery of rock, came madly plunging upward.
He had lighted the fuse, and was groping towards the top, a fear that he might be buried pursuing at his heels. He stumbled across the heavy load of treasure, left in its basket by the wall.
As one in an earthquake or fire clutches up something to save it, instinctively, so he laid hold of this useless dross and tugged it hotly up the passage. He reached the upper angle thus before he realized the folly of his action. He was certain then, as he dropped the load, that something had happened to his mines.
Before this time——
With the thought half finished in his swiftly-working brain came the thud and shock of his explosion—a tangible movement in the bulk of rock—and then the cataclysm.
Almost as one with Elaine's small detonation, the mighty jar, the air-confounding concussion, the smothered boom, and the dizzying tremor that swayed the hill, shook down the girl's bewildered senses. She saw the red leap from the cannon's mouth—and saw three men, surprised to inaction on the deadly angle of the trail—then down she went, her mind convinced she had rended the island asunder.
Sounds of colossal destruction stormed through the air for a time that seemed to have no end. The roar of a cataract of broken stone, confusedly toppling from estates erected by the ages, was lost in a tumult of other sounds where the headland seemed to fill the sea.
Dust of the rock and smoke of the rock ascended with fumes of the powder. Tidal disturbances splashed and seethed where the sea, having split to receive those tons of chaos, surged back with augmented violence at this displacement of its waters.
The cave had been blotted from existence! Its walls and its ceiling had crashed from their several places. to leave only an ugly scar. Whole towers of rocks, cleaved from the hill's main mass in sudden violence, had hung in disordered ruin against the quaking air for a second, then rioted downward on the Dyak boat to plunge it, rent and shivered, to the bottom.
Not a man of that murderous group below had survived the climax of that second. The place that had once been a treasure tomb, with a wailing "spirit" at its portals, was at last a very tomb indeed; but nevermore would its tidal wail arise on the air to render the cavern sacred.
Like a veritable spirit of underground destruction, Grenville emerged from the passage, unaware of all he had done. His thought was only of Elaine. He called, as he climbed to the terrace, but no glad little cry made response.
Then, abruptly, he saw her prostrate figure on the rocks—and beyond her two men, with one limberly inert, limping blindly down the trail. To dart to his store, snatch the last of his bombs, and pursue these three who had threatened Elaine was the first wild impulse of his being. Just one such blow, to follow up his victory, and perhaps they should need no more!
But he ran instead to the helpless figure near the cannon. He knew what she had done. He took her up swiftly, calling on her name, and carried her back to the former cave, where a rosy light from the risen sun made it seem like a haven of promise.
It was still very early in the morning when Grenville finally discovered, afar out northward on the sea, two Dyak boats making swiftly away from the island.
He feared for a moment, when the sails were first discerned, they were new craft about to arrive. He could not have known that his mines sunk the third of the boats formerly at anchor in the inlet, and was in no way enabled to determine how many of the enemy had perished at the cave.
It was almost too much to credit, this apparent retreat of the fiends so bent upon his capture. He made no positive report to Elaine of the fact he felt he must verify, lest he find himself obliged to retract it later.
She had quickly responded to his ministrations, having fainted as much from lack of food and rest as from shock in that final moment. Concerning the final effect of her shot, she was destined never to know. Grenville was far too wise to let her believe she had taken the life even of a fiend in human semblance.
He told her the Dyaks had fled from the place, which flight he had personally witnessed. He was certain, moreover, they would hardly return again that day, if they did not quit the island. Assured of the safety of the adventure, he descended to the jungle and returned with an armful of fruit. He proceeded later to the spring for a fresh supply of water.
Estimating the final fighting force of the Dyaks at ten, and conceding that five, at the least, must have perished at the cave, since one or two must have guarded the boats while three were searching the chamber, he concluded that no more than four at the most could still remain uninjured.
He had gone to the edge of the ruin, above the obliterated cave, and, having discovered no boat either near or far, had arrived at a fairly accurate conjecture respecting the fate of the craft the Dyaks had employed. One more calculation, respecting the number of able seamen required to navigate the retreating vessels, convinced him the island was deserted to the uses of Elaine and himself.
It was not, however, till that afternoon that he cautiously explored their former possessions and confirmed the hope in his breast. There was ample evidence about the spring, and in the jungle, of the methods of living the Dyaks had employed, but neither at the western inlet, back of the central hill of rock, nor at the friendly estuary, was anything boatlike to be found. His catamaran had vanished, along with the larger craft, and its fate he could readily surmise.
He lost no time in arranging a number of his snares and traps for the meat of which they were in need. Their camp was made as before on the terrace proper, despite the heat of the sun.
It was not until many of these essential comforts had been once more established that Sidney explored the gallery to determine what destruction had been wrought by his double mine.
Everything stored in the lower depths had been hopelessly buried by the rock. The passage was open for no more than half its former length. His bamboo raft was among the possessions sacrificed to the ruse that had finally succeeded beyond even his wildest dreams. Not ten feet back of his basket-load of treasure the last of the caving had been halted.
When Elaine's robe and couch, their water-jugs, and his last remaining bomb had been once more returned to the earlier camp, practically nothing but the gold and precious stones remained in the gallery. Elaine was aware the trinkets were lying there on view, but so vast was her relief at the vanishment of danger—though it might be temporarily only—she had no desire for gauds and baubles, and no particular curiosity respecting their worth or appearance.
Indeed, these two had endured too much to dwell upon jewels and gold. They were free from menace for a time, but—the future still loomed before them, inimical and obscure. Their life in this tropic exile was still to be faced, day after day.
That morning and long sweet afternoon, however, they passed in restful inactivity, possessed by ineffable thankfulness and a sense of relief that was utterly relaxing to their racked and exhausted nerves. It seemed a strange, impossible state, this peacefulness, security, and freedom to move about once more, alone in their Shalimar. And Grenville knew it was far too good to last.
Yet for several days it seemed as if the propitiating Fates made every possible endeavor to erase from the tablets of their memory all records of the agonies and apprehensions they had recently undergone.
They were wonderful days, for sheer inspiriting beauty. A cool, spicy breeze was wafted, with the sunshine, across the smiling ocean. The jungle was redolent of fragrances of intoxicating sweetness. Down on the beach her leafy bower once more found Elaine idly resting in her hammock, or busily preparing a tempting repast from the once more generous larder.
The girdle of gold she continued to wear in happiness that stole unbidden to her heart—a happiness as subtle and welcome as the perfumes that stole to her senses on the breeze. And when she finally found and plucked a solitary lotus blossom, floating near the estuary's edge, it seemed as if the ecstasy possessing all her nature must bring about some miracle of untold joy and bliss.
Grenville was hardly less transported by the hourly pleasures that day and night alike seemed bearing to this island world, like argosies from Eden. Subconsciously, beneath it all, he knew the boats that had sailed away would one day return, perhaps with more of their species, and better prepared for a swift and merciless revenge. Yet even then he was slow to employ his wits and energies to prepare for another siege, his disinclination for more revolting ordeals casting a lethargy on all his fighting attributes, while days like these, voluptuously serene and toxicant, suggested vast contentment to his spirit.
Indeed, his spirit as well as his body needed rest. To this he was constantly urged by Elaine, who understood, far better than himself, how unsparingly he had drained the vital essences of his being through all these uncounted weeks.
She, too, was aware they were only secure for a moment, that untold dangers must be lurking just beyond the rim of their purple horizon. She had finally learned from Sidney's lips how the vessels had sailed away. She had, however, seen this sign of security previously fail—and felt it would fail again.
The future her soul avoided. Darkness and tragedy were only too readily imagined. At best it was all uncertain, rife with shadows, peopled with ghosts of doubt and haunting dreads. Meantime, their own green Shalimar was once more fresh with sunny smiles that enticed her spirit to song.
She sang to herself through many hours of joyous "household" duties. The songs she chose were happy little fragments wherein she imagined Grenville set, with herself always traipsing at his side. She sang her songs to and of him, watching him shyly when he was near, and sending her thoughts to seek him out when he hunted or wandered in the jungle.
It was not until one of those incomparable mornings, with the tropic greenery fresh as a breath over clover, that he finally heard the notes she had prisoned in her bosom break forth in clear, sweet utterance, as crystal bright as the sun.
He paused in the screen of ferns and palms to partake of her wild, sweet rapture. And how lightly and gladly she sang!
"Come out, come out, my dearest dear,Come out and greet the sun!The birds awake on tree and brake,The merry May's begun!
"Come out and drink the diamond dew,Come out and tread the lea!The world is all awake, and youAre all the world to me!"
All that was starved in his nature stirred in response to the song. His blood leaped faster, its glow like that of rich and sense-delighting wine. A vivid memory of the one lawless kiss he had dared to snatch from Elaine's red lips inflamed a sweet desire.
He had called her his sweetheart, called her his mate, for the frenzy of joy, the ecstasy, her nature had wrought upon his own. He felt to-day his claim had been proved, by their life alone with God. They had worked and fought and planned the days away together, like a mated pair fresh created and cast to an Eden of the sea. They belonged to one another.
Love had come at last to Elaine—a love to match the strength and purpose of his own—a love overwhelming, natural, unabashed—was their rightful heritage. Its holiness gave it sanction; its rightness made it as pure as fire that makes hard metal molten.
He started slowly towards the hill whereon Elaine was busied. He halted, however, hidden from view by a new banana foliage, wondrously unrolling. Another song was floating on the air.
"Pale hands I loved, upon the Shalimar,Where are you now? Who lies beneath thy spell?Whom do you lead on rapture's roadway jarBefore you agonize them, in farewell?
"Pale hands I loved, upon the Shalimar,Where are you now? Where are you now?"
The mad intoxication of his senses rocked him strangely, there in the thicket. He saw the gleam of the jeweled girdle that spanned Elaine's lithe figure, as she moved about on the brink of the terrace above. Once again his heart struck mightily against its walls, as it had the first day she had worn this gold, by way of a maid's confession.
He knew at last her Shalimar was a wild little garden of love, to be sacredly shared between them. Excited to trembling he started again to join her at the cavern. Before he could come to the foot of the trail she suddenly ran to the terrace-edge, looking down like a vision of despair.
"Sidney!" she cried, "another Dyak boat! I've just this minute seen the sail!"
Ready to curse the merciless Fates, as well as his own recent laziness, which had made calamity possible, Grenville ran swiftly up the mended trail and followed Elaine to the tree.
The sail was certainly plain enough to see, far out in the purple waters. It was, to all appearances, bearing directly down upon the island. But, as Grenville watched, it altered shape. His face showed a sign of relaxing.
"I don't believe it's a Dyak craft," he told her, hoarsely. "It looks like—— I think it's a yacht."
It certainly was a modern yacht that the two of them saw, straining their eyes to identify the stranger roving afar in their waters.
A trick of the sun, or perhaps her paint, had concealed both masts and funnel for a time, presenting only a rakish angle of her prow and quarter, incredibly like a sail of the shape the Dyaks employ.
But, if eager excitement surged uninterruptedly through the pulses of the two ragged exiles, there on the barren headland, the bitterness of vain disappointments promptly began their inroads to its centers. The yacht was not only in great apparent haste, but was heading far off to the eastward, with not the slightest curiosity respecting the tiny island of whom no one could give a good report.
The flagpole was gone—and a new one had been neglected. There was no time now to erect another, as Grenville realized. He stood with Elaine on the brink of the rock, frantically waving his arms and cap, and even a large banana leaf, while the slender distant visitor came abreast them and continued straight ahead.
"They've got to see! They've got to!" he cried, in the desperate plight of mind begotten by this promise thus mercilessly snatched away.
Suddenly abandoning all other possible devices, he ran to his powder "magazine," where the last of the bombs was stored. He came with it hugged against his breast, in thoughtless and dangerous proximity to the firebrand clutched in his fist.
"Run back!" he said. "I haven't time to make it thoroughly safe!"
But Elaine remained to see him lower it down on the broken rocks, where the cave had formerly existed. She waited, indeed, till he lighted the fuse and drew her away towards the shelter.
His eyes were on the distant yacht, fast fading once more from their vision. The bomb must have failed. The fuse was deficient, he was sure. He started back to recover the thing and make it certain of explosion.
Then it burst, and flung shattered fragments along all the face of the wall.
Grenville was watching the distant yacht with fixed, almost frenzied, expression.
"They haven't heard!" he groaned, despairingly. "They're going faster than before!"
It certainly seemed as if the hurried stranger would no more halt than would a fiery meteor overdue at some cosmic appointment.
Then of a sudden, from its bow, broke a pure-white cloud of smoke. She had answered with the small brass piece employed to fire a salute. Her prow was turned before the sound came dully across the waters. Sobbing and laughing together, in sudden relief, Elaine sank down on her knees, among the bowlders, to watch this deliverance come.
The yacht was the "Petrel," luxurious hobby of Sir Myles Kemp, diverted from her homeward course by the merest whim of her owner to run up northward for a day while Sir Myles should inspect the rubber plantation and estate of his old fellow-officer, Captain Williams, who was not even present at the place.
The inspection was never made. The utter amazement occasioned by the chance discovery of the exiles of Three-Hill Island, plus their story of its fateful occupation, completely overshadowed all else in the minds of the "Petrel's" commander and crew, whose one idea was to assist the castaways home with the greatest speed of which steel and steam were capable. The picture the pair presented as they came aboard—Elaine amazingly tattered, a supple, tanned, incredibly sweet and womanly little figure—Grenville, a bearded, active master of the wild, clad in the skin of a cheeta for a coat, and bearing a richly colored tiger-skin, rolled up to contain a hundredweight of treasure—was one that Sir Myles was destined never to forget. He was likewise always destined to misunderstand the emotions with which, as they steamed away at last, Elaine looked back, with tears in her eyes, at the unpeopled Isle of Shalimar, so green in its purple setting, presenting its headland to the sea with that lone tree reared above its summit.
Grenville, too, had seen her eyes—and he more nearly comprehended.
By great good-fortune much of Lady Kemp's wardrobe had been left aboard the yacht. She and Elaine must have been of a size, to judge from the manner in which her yachting apparel and her dainty boudoir adjusted themselves to the form of the girl whom Sir Myles began forthwith to treat as he might a daughter.
The "Petrel" was put about and headed for Colombo—the nearest port at which an Orient steamer would be likely to be encountered. It was not until after dinner had been served and his guests had been made as thoroughly comfortable as warm-hearted hospitality, admiration for the two of them, and exceptional thoughtfulness could compass that Sir Myles related the accepted fate of the "Inca," from the wreck of which they escaped.
The news had gone forth that she foundered, and not a soul was saved. A few insignificant pieces of wreckage had been found afloat, far from the unknown ledge of rock the earthquake had lifted in the sea, but no one till now had heard so much as a theory as to what had been her fate.
That some such intelligence must have been sent to the worried and waiting relatives and friends beyond the seas, both Grenville and Elaine had long before comprehended, despite the preoccupation engrossing their minds all these many age-long weeks. But now, when at length they were homeward bound, the facts presented an aspect which there had been no occasion to prepare against while struggling for existence on the island.
There was one thought only in their minds. It was Fenton, and what he might have done when that news had expended its shock. And what would be the outcome of the story, now that the home-coming journey was resumed—now that he, Sidney Grenville, could at last complete and discharge his original commission?
He faced the business hardly more calmly than did Elaine. No argument possible to him now, respecting the warning Fenton had received, availed to allay and satisfy his haunting sense of honor. The man had matured on Shalimar, and his soul had been refined.
But what strange days those were that now succeeded! How they robbed him of his happiness, as they brought him nearer home! His spirits sank and would not rise, the nearer Colombo was approached. He told himself then, once he could wire, acquaint Gerald Fenton with the fact they were safe, and would soon be with him, he would come to some peace of mind.
But, when at length the wire was sent, he experienced no such relief. Relief, indeed, had failed to come when for three days and nights the Orient boat had been plowing across the Indian Ocean, rushing headlong from the tropic heat to the distant ports beyond.
He thought, perhaps, if he informed Elaine, the business would be settled. He attempted that day to introduce the subject, but in vain. Elaine was so sparklingly happy! He postponed the ordeal for the night.
The moon had returned to the skies again, bringing to the wanderers ineffable memories of other nights, when peace lay tranquilly fragrant on the world of their Shalimar. He detected its subtle influence on the ever-vivacious little woman who had shared his perils and his joys.
Elaine was softly thrilling to the spell of it all as she halted beside him, finally, on a strip of the deck abandoned to their uses. She felt that the atmosphere was overcharged, and wondered what might be impending. To still the pounding of her heart she leaned on the taffrail, ecstatically in touch with Grenville's arm. She spoke of the wonder of the night.
"Yes," drawled Grenville, in his old dry way, "great facilities here for manufacturing nights—— I wired Gerald from Colombo."
For a moment Elaine was puzzled by this wholly irrelevant remark. Then her heart began to rock uneasily.
"You—wired we were coming home?"
"Wired I was fetching you home, after unavoidable delay."
She recognized the difference between the way that she and he had expressed the principal fact. She felt herself, as it were, already surrendered to a man grown singularly foreign to her nature. It seemed to her incredible that Sidney and she should ever again be parted, or work out their several destinies in any manner save together—especially after all he had said and even done.
"Was that—all you said?" she asked him, faintly.
"No. I said I'd be best man—or something of the sort."
Elaine felt something leaden go down to the point of her heart.
"You wanted him to know that you had no idea—— You wanted Gerald to understand——" She could not finish her sentence. Her face was hotly flaming, but at least she could turn it away.
Grenville's voice was hard and strange.
"It was barely his right to know that we were coming. I could do no less, as you'll certainly agree."
His speeches were constrained, unnatural, as Elaine had instantly felt. Her own were scarcely less embarrassed—after all these months when their entire world had comprised themselves alone. It seemed a monstrous error that anything but free, unfettered companionship and candor should exist between them now.
"I know," she said. "Of course." She added, after a moment, "It seems so peculiar, that's all—to—resume as we were before."
He was looking at his fist, for no good reason in the world.
"It is what you have hoped for every day."
"To get away from the Dyaks—why, of course."
Another silence supervened. After three unsuccessful efforts at speech, Elaine at last found the voice and the courage for a question:
"Do you wish to be—best man?"
Grenville spread out his fingers, for further inspection.
"I probably shouldn't have suggested it otherwise."
She turned upon him impulsively. "Sidney, are you absolutely honest?"
"Oh, I wouldn't trouble old Diogenes to get out of his grave and look me up," he answered, in his customary spirit, "but I've got a faint idea what honor means."
How well she knew his various manners of evasion! Her heart was pounding furiously. She leaned with all her weight against the rail, as if for fear he must hear its clamorous confessions.
She had never been so excited in her life—or more courageous. Likewise she felt she possessed certain God-given rights that were poised at the brink of disaster. For a love like hers comes never lightly and is not to be lightly dismissed. Her utterance was difficult, but mastered.
"One night—in the smoke—on the island—when we might have died of thirst—and you came with water—— You remember what you said?"
"Concerning what?"
"Concerning—love."
He was gripping a stanchion fiercely; his fingers were white with the strain.
"Vaguely—— I think I was exhausted."
"Oh! you're not—you're not honest at all!" she suddenly exploded. "That day of the wreck—on the steamer—you know what you said to me then! And any man who has acted so nobly, so thoughtfully——"
He turned and gripped the small, soft hand by his coat-sleeve on the rail.
"Don't do it, little woman—don't do it!" he said, in a low voice, charged with passion. "You told me some stinging truths that day, and now—they're truer than ever!"
"I didn't!" she said, no longer master of her feelings. "I didn't tell the truth! I said I hated—said I loathed—— And yousaidI'd throw his ring in the sea—and you said you'd make me—like you—some—and you know that I couldn't help liking you now—when you've treated me so horribly all the time! And after everything we've done together——"
"Elaine!" he interrupted, hoarsely, "when did you throw away his ring?"
"After the tiger—the night I gave you the cap, and you acted so hatefully and mean! It bounced and went into the water."
He was white, and tremendously shaken, while gleams of incandescence burned deeply in his eyes. How he stayed the lawless impulse to take her to his arms he never knew. He dropped her hand and turned away, with a savage note of pain upon his lips.
"Good Heavens!" he said, "why don't you help me a little? I had no right then! I have no right now! ... I'm going to take you home to Fenton, if it's the very last act of my life!"
She, too, was white and trembling.
"I know what you mean—youneverloved! You don't know the meaning of the word!"
"All right," he said. "We'll let it go at that."
"Oh, you're perfectly horrid!" she suddenly cried, the hot tears springing to her eyes. "I refuse to be taken back to Gerald! I refuse to have anything more to do with any selfish man in the world!"
She retreated a little towards the saloon, her two hands going swiftly to a gleaming band that all but spanned her waist.
"And there's your old girdle, with Gerald's ring, that you made me throw away!" she added, flinging the tiger's collar towards the sea.
It struck on a stanchion, bounded to the deck, and settled against a near-by chair. She waited a second, instantly ashamed, and longing to beg his forgiveness. But he leaned as before against the rail, his eyes still bent upon the water.
Weakly, with drooping spirits, Elaine retreated through an open door, still watching, in hopes he would turn and call her back. Then, stoutly suppressing her choking and pent emotions, she fled to the dismal comfort of her stateroom, and, falling face downward in her narrow berth, surrendered to the vast relief of sobbing.
That one more shock of surprise could overtake the returning castaways before the final landing could be accomplished would have seemed incredible to either Grenville or Elaine—and yet it came.
They had spent a number of wretched days—days far more miserable and hope-destroying than any their dire experience had brought into being, as the mere result of that final scene enacted in the moonlight by the rail.
The steamer had touched in the night at some unimportant, outlying port of call to which no one had paid the tribute of interest usual on the sea. A single male passenger had boarded.
The man was Gerald Fenton. The message dispatched from Colombo had fetched him, post haste, to this midway ground for the meeting. But the meeting occurred in a manner wholly unexpected.
Like the wholly considerate gentleman he was, Fenton had made all preparations for removing the startling elements from the fact of his presence on the boat. Like so many of life's little schemings, however, the plans went all "aglee."
Elaine not only did not linger in her stateroom in the morning late enough to receive his note from the stewardess, but, when she hastened up to the topmost deck for her early morning exercise before the more lazy should appear, she literally ran into Fenton's arms at the head of the narrow stairs.
Her surprise could hardly have been greater. She recoiled from the contact automatically, before she had time to see who it was with whom she had collided. Then a note of astonishment broke from her lips as she halted, leadenly.
"Why—Gerald!" she managed to stammer, without the slightest hint of gladness in her tone. "Here?"
"Well, little girl!" he answered, smilingly; and, coming to her in his quiet way, he took her hands to greet her with a kiss.
A note of uncertainty forced itself to audible expression as she slightly retreated from his proffered caress and received it on her cheek.
"Well! well!" Fenton continued, "you're certainly fit—and brown! You couldn't have had the note I sent to break the news. I tried to give you warning."
"No," she said, constrainedly, "I've had no word. How did you get here—come aboard? I don't see how—— It took me so by surprise."
"I'm sorry," he said, his smile losing something of its brightness. "I boarded at midnight, when the steamer touched at Fargo. When I got Sid's wholly incredible wire that you were both safe and well and coming home—— But how is the good old rascal?"
Elaine's constraint increased.
"Quite well, I believe—as far as I know."
"Isn't he with you, here on the boat, going home?"
"Oh, yes, he's on the steamer."
Fenton was groping, without a woman's intuitions, through the something he felt in the air.
"Don't you like him, Elaine?" he asked her, bluntly. "What's wrong?"
"Why—nothing's wrong," she answered, unconvincingly. "It's just the surprise of meeting you like this."
"I'm sorry," he said, as he had before, his eyes now entirely smileless. "I might have managed it better, I suppose—— Aren't you a little bit glad to see me?"
Elaine attempted a smile and a manner more cordial. "Of course—I'm delighted! But it takes me just a minute or so to realize it's really you."
"Never mind. Take your time," he told her, indulgently. "Perfect miracle, you know, that you and old Sid should have come through the wreck of the 'Inca'—the sole survivors of the accident—and lived out there—somewhere—on an island, I hear—and now be nearing home. I'm eager to hear the story."
"Yes," she agreed, "it doesn't seem real to me, now. It's more like a long, strange dream."
"I have only heard a little from the captain," he continued, forcing a conversation which he felt was wholly unspontaneous and hardly even congenial.
"Naturally, all his information——"
She saw his eyes quickly brighten as his gaze went past her to the stairs.
"Sid!" he cried, moving swiftly forward; and Grenville appeared on the deck.
His face was suddenly reddened, beneath the veneer of tan. But the boyish joy with which he rushed for Fenton was a heartening thing to see.
The two simply gripped, with might and main, and hammered each other with one free hand apiece, and laughed, and called one another astonishing names till it seemed they might explode.
"You savage! You tough old Redskin!" Fenton finally managed to articulate, distinctly. "If it isn't yourself as big as life! And I want you to know I haven't made your fortune—not exactly—yet—but it's certain at last. And how about your winning my little girl? Speak up, you caveman of the—— Oh, Elaine!"
But Elaine had fled the scene.
That moment began the tug at the ties of friendship and the test of the souls of the three. It was not a time of happiness that thereupon ensued. Elaine avoided both the men as far as possible. Grenville alone seemed natural, and yet even his smiles were tinged with the artificial.
He was glad to relate their varied adventures—the tale of the perils through which they had finally won. But how much of it all Gerald Fenton really heard no man could with certainty tell.
Fenton was neither a self-conceited person nor a blind man, groping through life. Through the stem of his finely colored calabash he puffed many a thought, along with his fragrant tobacco fume, and revolved it in his brain.
Between certain lines of Grenville's story he read deep happenings. That Sidney had saved and preserved Elaine, and battled for her comfort and her very life, against all but overwhelming odds, was a fact that required no rehearsal.
Mere propinquity, as Fenton knew, has always been the match-maker incomparable, throughout the habited world. Add to the quite exceptional propinquity of a tropic-island existence a splendid and unfaltering heroism in Grenville, together with a mastery of every situation, months of daily service and devotion, and the rare good looks that Sidney had certainly developed—and what wonder Elaine should be changed?
The change in her bearing had struck him at once at the moment of their meeting by the stairs. He had never got past that since. When at length his course was clearly defined and his resolution firmly fixed, it still required skillful maneuvering on Fenton's part to manage the one little climax on which he finally determined.
But night, with her shadows, her softening moods, and her veiling ways of comfort, was an ally worthy of his trust. When he finally engineered the unsuspicious Grenville to the upper deck, where Elaine had already been enticed, evasion of the issue was done.
"It's amazing," said Fenton, in a pleasant, easy manner, "how I am becoming the talker of the crowd, when both you fond adventurers should be spilling out lectures by the mile. However, such is life." He paused for a moment, but the others did not speak.
"The genuine wonder of it all," he presently continued, "is seeing you both come back thus, safe and sound. I underwent my bit of grief when the news of the monstrous disaster finally arrived, as, of course, did many another. I thought I had lost the dearest friend and the—well, the dearest two friends—the dearest two beings in the world to me, in one huge cataclysm."
He paused once more and relighted his pipe. The flame of his match threw a rosy glow on the two set faces on either side of his position, as well as on his own. No one looked at anyone else, and the two still failed to answer.
"Well—here you both are!" the smoker resumed, crushing the match and throwing it away. "If I were to lose your love and friendship now—— But never mind that—I sha'n't! You were dead to me, both of you, all those months, and mourned rather poignantly. That's the point I want you both to understand—that I had accepted the fact of losing you both, forever."
Grenville slightly stirred, but did not speak. Elaine was clasping her hands in her lap and locking her fingers till they ached.
"Naturally," Fenton told them, quietly, "I conformed my thoughts to your demise, at last, as we all must do in actual cases. I adjusted my heart-strings, when I could, anew. Nobody else came into my life, to occupy your places, for nobody could. Yet I did adjust things as I've said. Well—now that brings us up to the point."
Grenville sank back against his seat, but restlessly leaned forward as before. Elaine alone remained absolutely motionless, rigid with attention, if not also with suppressed excitement at something she felt impending. Fenton thumbed at the glowing tobacco in his pipe.
"It appears to me," he continued, "all the circumstances I have mentioned being taken into consideration, that you two friends that I love so well have so many times saved one another's lives that no one living has the slightest right to think or to act as might have been the case if you had not passed so entirely from his ken, and his plans, and daily existence. His claims to your resurrected selves are—different, let us say, or secondary."
The silence that fell for a moment became acutely painful.
"That's all I'm really driving at, after all my long and labored preamble," Fenton concluded, deliberately rising and facing about to confront the pair on the bench. "I recognize certain inevitable things—and I know they're right—and the way the Almighty intended.... Don't let me lose my friends again.... Let's all be sensible.... I don't ask or expect to be loved the way you love one another—but I'd like to be old Gerald to you both."
He turned and went slowly down the narrow stairs, and his pipe trailed a spark behind him.
*****
After a time, when Grenville moved over and placed his arm about Elaine, she struggled for a moment, feebly.
"I don't—I don't love you in the least!" she protested. "I hate you—as I always have—and the way I always shall!"
Her arms went swiftly about his neck, however, in a passionate, fierce little hug. She was laughing and crying together.
"All right," said Grenville, calmly. "That's the kind of hate I want."
He kissed her once on her upturned lips for every hour they had suffered.